The she-economy: From invisible to investable

As investors, we spend a great deal of time seeking new sources of returns. We debate productivity, demographics, technology and capital formation. Yet one of the largest growth opportunities has been hiding in plain sight, and it's not a new asset class. It's the historically underutilised half of the economy: women.

Here we are not focusing on women as a social cause, and it is certainly not a case of women versus men. We believe it is better understood as a capacity-utilisation story. What happens when more people can convert education into earnings, earnings into ownership and ownership into investable capital? The answer is that many things change. Growth and consumption patterns change, the tax base changes and companies discover new customers. And new decision makers emerge when it comes to family wealth.

We describe this process as the shift from "invisible to investable". Simply put, women have always worked, produced, cared, bought and influenced, but their work remained unseen in a formal sense. What has changed is that more of that economic value is becoming measured, financed, owned and invested. Our experts, Annelise Peers, Awongiwe Booi and Boipelo Rabothata explain how.

The long road from legal rights to economic participation

By Annelise Peers

When we started researching this topic, the first thing that struck me was how recent many of the foundations of women's economic participation are.

Today, fewer than 5% of women worldwide live in economies that provide anything close to full legal equality, and no economy has secured all the legal rights required for full economic participation. Even where laws have improved, women still face constraints that affect the work they can do, the businesses they can build and the opportunities they can pursue.

Property rights are perhaps the clearest example. Over nearly two centuries, women have gradually gained rights to own property, control earnings, access credit and inherit assets. Married women in New York received separate property rights in 1848. The UK introduced reforms in 1870 and expanded them further thereafter. France moved from salary control rights to independent work and property rights. In South Africa, which emerged from apartheid in the early 1990s, equal status and asset capacity were established after the Constitution was introduced in 1994.

Historically, one of the main challenges was ownership itself. Today, the challenge is whether institutions, policies and enforcement make that ownership meaningful in practice.

The latest World Bank data illustrates this. Women globally enjoy only about 67% of the legal rights available to men. However, supportive institutions are often lacking, as are enforcement mechanisms. Rights may exist on paper, but those rights are not always translated into opportunity and outcomes. In practice, only 4% of women live in economies that score between 90 and 100 on an index of 10 key areas, according to the World Bank's Women, Business and Law 2026 report (see below).

Figure 1: Share of the world's women living in economies scoring 90–100 on the Women, Business and Law legal frameworks index

Source: World Bank and United Nations, 'Women, Business and the Law 2026', 04/09/2026

Much, therefore, remains to be done, and women's economic participation remains one of the most powerful yet still underused drivers of jobs, productivity and growth. At a time when many economies face slowing growth and demographic challenges, leaving women on the economic sidelines is therefore economically inefficient as well as unfair.

According to the World Bank report:

"When women work, lead, and innovate, economies become more productive, firms perform better, and societies grow more resilient. Gender inclusion strengthens labour markets, boosts productivity, and fuels economic dynamism. In short, expanding women's economic participation is not just a social aspiration, it is an economic imperative.

"In some parts of the world such as South Asia, it may well be the single best strategy for increasing the growth potential of the economy."

We can view the issue through five channels: time, health, skills, businesses and capital. These form the operating system through which participation becomes productivity and productivity becomes growth. The investable question is therefore where greater participation will change revenues, costs, assets and addressable markets.

When women entered the data, the macro engine changed

By Awongiwe Booi

outside the formal economy (and was "invisible" in formal-sector numbers), in the form of activities such as raising children or informal-sector work.

However, as women have gained greater access to education, formal employment, financial services and ownership, there has been an important shift. Economic activity that was previously invisible began to appear: in personal earnings and consumer spending, as well as in investment flows and wealth creation.

A feedback loop drives this boom. The acquisition of skills creates a larger labour pool in specialist areas. Employment in an expanding labour pool converts those skills into income. Income creates purchasing power. Purchasing power creates ownership. Ownership creates capital flows. The result is a reinforcing cycle in which more participation leads to more wealth creation and greater economic influence.

Figure 2: Five engines driving female economic influence

Source: MoneyWeb, TIME, IMD 04/09/2026

Yet the labour-market opportunity on its own is still enormous. Global female labour-force participation is around 53%, compared with roughly 80% for men. Around 708 million women remain outside the labour force due to caregiving and other responsibilities. In other words, the talent exists but isn't being applied in the formal economy. To grow this participation rate, economies need the infrastructure that allows talent to participate productively.

Women already influence the majority of consumer spending decisions in many markets and represent a significant share of global economic output. They influence what households buy, which financial products succeed, how companies design products and where capital ultimately flows.

There are often big discrepancies between countries. In a developing market like South Africa, for example, women are most influential in spending on groceries, education, financial services and household essentials. At the other end of the scale, in the US, the spending mix includes travel, wellness, experiences, and discretionary purchases.

A similar dynamic is now appearing in investment markets. Women's participation on retail investing platforms continues to increase and digital access has accelerated. Female-controlled wealth is rising globally, while younger women are entering investment markets at higher rates than previous generations.

At that point, the narrative expands from a consumer story to an asset-allocation story, as more female-led capital makes its way into investments.

Hidden alpha: why the old models are looking in the wrong places

Boipelo Rabothata

First, a warning. The "she-economy" is not new. Women have driven some of the world's best consumer businesses for decades. Beauty, personal care, luxury goods and wellness businesses (among many others) have long benefited from female demand, and it makes sense that these should be started and led by women.

Identifying a female customer base does not, on its own, create alpha (in other words, guarantee a winning investment). We can use the contrasting examples of Lululemon and Bumble to illustrate this point.

Lululemon, the active wear brand, built a durable business around female demand, using that strength to fund expansion into new geographies and categories, including men's gear. Bumble, the dating app, built a compelling female-first proposition, but there was no "second engine" to sustain further growth. The lesson is that female participation is not the investment thesis by itself. Product quality, economics and valuation still matter.

For me, the alpha opportunity emerges before the market fully prices the change. We can put this into three stages: behavioural change (e.g., when female participation helps shift spending and adoption), improving economics (customer growth or increased frequency of use), and market recognition (expectations rise and the market starts to value the business accordingly). Thus, the trend only creates alpha while investors are still underestimating its impact. Once everyone agrees, most of the easy money has already been made.

That is why I am interested in places where women are showing up before it is obvious. Golf is one example. Female participation continues to grow, and companies such as Callaway appear well-positioned to benefit. Firearms are another (perhaps controversial) example: nearly half of new US gun buyers since 2019 have been women.

Formula One is my favourite example. Historically, it enjoyed an overwhelmingly male audience. Today, women comprise roughly 42% of fans and account for the majority of new fans. Liberty Media's (which holds a majority stake in Formula 1's commercial arm) revenue model is still largely discussed in terms of media rights and race economics. Audience demographics are shifting meaningfully, though, and the question now is whether the market fully appreciates the monetisation opportunities that accompany that change.

Healthcare is another interesting case. Natera is a firm that specialises in non-invasive, cell-free DNA testing technology; its business is often viewed primarily through an oncology lens, yet a significant portion of its business is linked to women's health.

Sometimes the opportunity is not a women-focused company but a women-focused revenue stream hidden within a company that investors categorise differently.

Ultimately, hidden alpha emerges where behaviour changes first and expectations change later.

Note to readers:

This article was written with the assistance of artificial intelligence, based on research by the authors. The article was checked and edited by the authors and our editorial team.