Chart of the Week: March 16, 2026: Women in leadership funds

Observations: 

• In celebration of Women’s History Month, an annual observation to highlight the contribution of women to events in history and contemporary society, it seems appropriate to revisit the segment of sustainable thematic funds that share a common thesis, namely advancing women’s empowerment, development and leadership roles.

• The segment, which now consists of four funds that explicitly target women in the fund’s name, includes two mutual funds, seven share classes, as well as two ETFs, with assets in the amount of $937.7 million at the end of February 2026. Managed by four separate firms, the assets of the four funds are concentrated in two investment vehicles that, on a combined basis, manage $869.7 million or 93% of the segment’s assets. These two funds are the Impax Ellevate Women’s Leadership Fund managed by Impax Asset Management and Fidelity Women’s Leadership Fund managed by Fidelity Management and Research (FMR). Over the last three plus years, the number of funds pursuing the same thematic focus has declined due to exits through re-brandings and liquidations. In recent years, high profile exits include the rebranding of the Glenmede Women in Leadership U.S. Equity Portfolio, the liquidation and delisting effective November 2025 of the Fidelity Women’s Leadership ETF and the SPDR MSCI USA Gender Diversity ETF that remains listed but has adopted a broader gender diversity mandate while reducing its focus on women in leadership roles effective as of year-end 2022.

• Despite a common theme, the funds differ in their investment approach, how they implement their mandate, their geographic reach, their risk/return profiles as well as expense ratios.

• Fidelity’s Women’s Leadership Fund and the Impact Shares Women’s Empowerment ETF both employ active investment strategies and a focus on US large cap growth and value stocks. The same focus characterizes the Impact Shares Women’s Empowerment ETF, however, the fund is passively managed. Hypatia Women’s CEO ETF emphasizes US small cap growth and value stocks whereas the Impax Ellevate Global Women’s Leadership Fund employs an active fundamental approach but maintains a broader perspective by investing in global large cap stocks that combine growth and value stocks to achieve a blended portfolio.

• Sustainability strategies vary, ranging from the application of limited criteria to the selection of companies, for example, women CEO’s, to broader thematic qualifications along with ESG integration, screening and exclusionary approaches, as summarized below for each fund listed in descending size order:
– Impax Ellevate Global Women’s Leadership Fund. The fund invests in companies that are believed to be well-positioned to benefit from the transition to a more sustainable global economy and integrating ESG analysis into portfolio construction and management. This involves excluding otherwise eligible companies that rank in the bottom 50% based on gender leadership scores and further excluding companies failing the fund’s ESG or sustainability criteria. The fund also applies sector-based exclusions: no coal/oil/gas energy utilities, no deforestation-risk agricultural commodities, no military arms manufacturers. Based on the number of companies in the portfolio, 80% or greater of the portfolio weight is targeted to fall within the top 25% of the gender-scored universe. An ESG profile assessment is an explicit input to investment decisions alongside the proprietary Impax Gender Score.
-Fidelity’s Women’s Leadership Fund employs women-in-leadership screens and invests in companies with at least one woman on the senior management team, ≥1/3 female board representation, or maintains best-in-class gender diversity policies (parental leave, pay equity, promotion). FMR applies its proprietary ESG ratings process, evaluating companies across four categories, including corporate governance, human capital management, environmental impacts, and community impacts, and may avoid companies with substandard ESG performance. The fund also applies FMR’s sustainable investing exclusions criteria to avoid investments in issuers that are directly engaged in, and/or derive significant revenue from, certain industries. At present, these include civilian semi-automatic firearms, tobacco production, or bonds issued against the proceeds of tobacco settlements, for-profit prisons; controversial weapons (e.g. cluster munitions, land mines, biological/chemical weapons, blinding lasers, and incendiary weapons), and thermal coal production and/or mining.
-Impact Shares Women’s Empowerment ETF. The fund tracks the Morningstar Women’s Empowerment Index, constructed using Equileap’s proprietary scoring methodology (inspired by the UN’s Women Empowerment Principles). The fund’s ESG/gender screen consists of two layers: First, companies are excluded if they derive a majority revenues from weapons, gambling, or tobacco, and companies on the Norwegian Ethics Council exclusion list. Second, a positive screen is applied by ranking all eligible U.S. large/mid-cap companies on 35 points across 19 gender equality criteria in four categories, including (a) gender balance in leadership and workforce, (b) equal compensation and work-life balance, (c) policies promoting gender equality, and (d) commitment to transparency & accountability.
-Hypatia Women CEO ETF. The fund invests in U.S.-listed equities of companies with a female Chief Executive Officer. While not an index fund, SYMBOL primarily tracks the Hypatia Women CEO Index and is concentrated on CEO gender as its sole sustainability criterion.

• Recent 12-month performance favors Fidelity (21%) and Hypatia (19%), but over 3 and 5 years, Impact Shares and Impax Ellevate lead on a risk-adjusted basis. The anomalous trailing-year weakness of WOMN appears cyclical. Hypatia’s small-cap tilt introduces meaningful additional volatility. None of the funds generates positive alpha on a 3-year basis, a reminder that the gender screen, while philosophically compelling, has not yet translated into benchmark-beating risk-adjusted returns in this period.

• Impax Ellevate’s $707.9 million in assets under management and 30+ year history stands in stark contrast to Hypatia’s $8.7M, which faces a meaningful viability question as a standalone ETF.

• Finally, expense ratios range from a low of 0.52% applicable to the institutional share class of the Impax Ellevate Global Women’s Leadership Fund to a high of 1.73% levied by the Fidelity Women’s Leadership C shares. Impact Shares Women’s Empowerment ETF charges 0.75% while Hypatia Women’s CEO ETF reports a 0.85% expense ratio.