08/03/2020

B3 Holds Bell Ringing Ceremony for Gender Equality


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São Paulo, March 9, 2020 – B3, Brazil’s stock exchange, held today the global bell ringing initiative for gender equality. The event aims to raise awareness about women's economic empowerment and opportunities for the private sector by promoting gender equality and sustainable development. The first Ring the Bell for Gender Equality initiative took place six years ago at stock exchanges all over the world and was first held by B3 in 2017. The initiative arose from a partnership between Global Compact, Women in ETFs, World Federation of Exchanges (WFE), UN Women, Sustainable Stock Exchanges Initiative (SSE) and International Finance Corporation (IFC).

This year, approximately 80 exchanges worldwide held the event. Company CEOs and representatives debated the issue at B3 in the morning and the event was divided into three parts. First, a panel with CEOs, in which Ana Carla Abrão, from Oliver Wyman and B3's advisor, Marcelo Marangon, from Citi Brasil, and Marcelo Castellanos, from IFC, discussed gender equality mediated by B3’s CEO, Gilson Finkelsztain.

In the second part of the morning, Nina Silva, from Black Money, delivered an inspiring speech on gender equality with data showing the inequality of women and black women in Brazil. “Women are 56% of the Brazilian population and black women, 28.7%. When we talk about the Brazilian market, we fail to inject BRL500 billion into the GDP every year due to wage inequality between genders and BRL880 billion due to racial and ethnic inequality,” said Nina.  

“Our presence here today is a way to honor those 112 million Brazilians of African descent and those 56% women and talk about our work in relation to gender equality. We are sick and tired of being judged and being limited to occupying the spaces that others prejudge that we should occupy. That’s why we’ve created this movement,” added the founder of the Black Money Movement.  

Before the traditional bell ringing, representatives from Santander, Raízen, the UN Global Compact Brazil Network, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), UN Women and the European Union also met to discuss how companies can contribute to promoting gender equality.

To Gilson Finkelsztain, CEO of the Brazilian stock exchange, B3 plays an important role as a promoter of good practices and, for this reason, carries out initiatives to drive the diversity agenda. “Since 2017, we have been signatories of the Women's Empowerment Principles (WEPs), a UN Women and Global Compact initiative that helps the private sector to promote gender equality in the workplace, in the market and in the community and we support the Global Compact Young SDG Innovators to increase women’s representation in leadership positions in line with the SDG 5 goal, which addresses gender equality,” said Gilson at the event.

On the business side, “the companies that make up our main sustainability index, the ISE, are urged to rethink and quantify the gender equality issue in their strategy with a question on this topic. We want to not only encourage the adoption of policies and practices, but also to measure the results so that they become examples for other companies. At the other end of the business, investors also want companies to make changes that will narrow the gap between men and women,” emphasized Gilson.

Women investors

The number of women investing in equities today is twice as high as in December 2018. At the time, the number of individual female investors had reached 179,000+. Today, there are 466,984 female investor accounts registered at B3.  

 

For further information on the number of investors at B3, visit http://www.b3.com.br/pt_br/market-data-e-indices/servicos-de-dados/market-data/consultas/mercado-a-vista/historico-pessoas-fisicas/