Integrating Gender into Infrastructure Investments: An Interview with Marco Serena, PIDG
Marco Serena is the Group Head of Sustainable Development at the Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG), which designs and invests in infrastructure projects across emerging markets. Marco’s remit is to oversee the early stage impact assessment of all PIDG investments, and to deepen sustainable impact including on gender and climate. He spoke to us about the challenges and learnings from PIDG’s work to date, and what’s on the horizon for gender-smart infrastructure investments.
Where does the gender lens surface within infrastructure?
We try to look at what the barriers are for women attempting to economically integrate, through the infrastructure projects. So mainly in terms of jobs, leadership positions, and project supply chain. We also look at what the barriers are for women in terms of equal access to infrastructure services. It's about how products and services are designed, basically how work practices, policies and supply chain engagement are designed and asking the question of how we can ensure women are included to the greatest extent possible.
What are some of the challenges to integrating a gender lens that you faced in the past 2- 3 years?
“We’re finding that there’s a very low level of understanding on how to build the project in a way that embeds a gender lens. In reality, it is often quite a simple thing to do; the key is getting the timing right so the due diligence window is not missed.”
As an infrastructure investor, the biggest challenge in the last couple of years has been having to rely a lot on third parties for the due diligence of investments, because of not being able to travel. This has exacerbated the challenge that we've got in gender lens investing, which is access to expertise that can be embedded in the due diligence of the investments, as well as work that can be done around the investments themselves. We’re finding that there’s a very low level of understanding on how to build the project in a way that embeds a gender lens. In reality, it is often quite a simple thing to do; the key is getting the timing right so the due diligence window is not missed. And so we need to be very active and contribute to the projects as an active investor.
What patterns or trends have you noticed?
We've seen a greater willingness from the project developers and sponsors we work with to take gender considerations into account, mainly in the renewable energy industry and the off-grid energy industry. A lot of the companies we're looking at are realising the business benefits of gender lens investing, and taking on a gender equality analysis and alliances in the development of their businesses. A good example is in renewables, women in technical roles - as sales agents, but also as technicians and engineers - and how that is beneficial to the business in terms of accessing new customer bases and expanding them. I’ve seen a lot of good examples in Africa, when it comes to renewable and off-grid. We've seen good examples in some countries with high-level exclusion of women like Pakistan, in particular in the energy sector. I think these are the beacons.
What’s a good example of an infrastructure investment with a combined gender and climate lens?
We've had a couple of those in Kenya and one which is active now in the DRC—we're talking about mini-grids in particular. The other outstanding program was the one in Pakistan; the program includes a national grid company called K-Electric (KE), and again it is infrastructure linked to climate adaptation. It looks at the health and safety of the connections between people and households, in deprived areas in Karachi. Extreme weather is making connections unsafe and even more dangerous on a number of fronts. The gender lens in this instance comes from K-Electric’s Roshni Baji programme, which trains local women about electrical safety so that they can engage other local women in the community and convince them to switch to legal and safe connections. The conservative context of this particular project setting means that the ‘traditional approach’ of sending an employee (typically male in the energy sector) to the house to speak to the women would not be possible.
What other themes are you paying attention to?
There's a lot of talk about water and nature-based solutions, and how this can be another area for alignment between the gender lens, the business interest, the commercial interest and the impact interest. It is still in the exploratory stage though. The other thing is the attempt to go beyond a pure gender lens, and for those who are more active in gender to try and look at gender and inclusion more broadly. In the infrastructure space it's complicated to work out what broader inclusion means if you go beyond gender, and maybe disability. This is due to lack of data - there are gaps on SDG 5 data, even gender disaggregation is not standard and there are very few data points on people with disabilities and other inclusion issues. This is compounded by infrastructure investors treating vulnerable people as a homogenous group and by the misconception that upstream infrastructure has equal or neutral impacts across various groups of people.
What do you think is needed to unlock more gender-smart infrastructure investment?
“We need to go beyond capital allocation targets and checklists, in terms of the type of businesses, and maybe focus a little bit more on what the tools to influence are in infrastructure projects. ”
We need to go beyond capital allocation targets and checklists, in terms of the type of businesses, and maybe focus a little bit more on what the tools to influence are in infrastructure projects. One of the things we're looking at is the due diligence studies; it's about the project development itself and working at that initial stage. A lot of bringing the project to bankability has got to do with technical studies and traditional ESG studies. We are looking at how to include a gender and inclusion lens at this stage, in order to influence project design. So I think that will have a knock on effect, and more capital will be allocated because there will be more projects designed with a gender lens. The second big need is to start looking at specific outcomes for women in infrastructure projects to challenge the idea that infrastructure is gender blind. Generating data and learning will play a big part.
In what other ways do you think gender lens investing might evolve?
Gender lens investing will evolve together with the next evolution of climate finance, which is going to be looking at nature a lot more. So at the moment climate finance mainly looks at emissions, but it’s evolving by taking nature into account in terms of co-dependency between nature and people. Looking at the co-dependency of nature, gender and inclusion - hopefully this is the direction that investors will take as this might open new opportunities. However, I think there is also still a long way to go in pushing gender lens investing further up the agenda for investors. The reality is, in regions where we operate, impact investing or even being an active investor is yet to become mainstream, which is counter intuitive given how much of a positive difference investment can make in those markets for people, planet and inclusion.
image credit: K-Electric’s Roshni Baji women ambassadors (K Electric)
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