Bond, gender bond: challenges and barriers in this sustainable finance instrument issuance

• Ano de defesa: 2024
• Autor(a) principal: Bonifacio, Denise
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Instituição de defesa: Biblioteca Digitais de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Palavras-chave em Português: Finanças sustentáveis; Gender bonds; Gender equality; Igualdade de gênero; Objetivos de desenvolvimento sustentável; Sustainable development goals; Sustainable finance; Títulos de gênero
• Link de acesso: https://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/96/96132/tde-04122024-094811/

Sustainable finance is an investment leverage alternative to meet Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), more specifically through the strategy of issuing labeled bonds. Among these financial instruments, the environmental and social agenda have taken off in the market over the past few years, through green bonds and social bonds issuances. However, gender bonds, which are focused on SDG 5 - Gender Equality, remain stagnant. One listed reason for this gap is the lack of clarity about gender bonds definition and guidelines for their issuance. Through this perspective, this study aims to enrich the existing literature on gender bonds by identifying the main challenges and barriers to these instruments\' issuance. To achieve this goal, at first, a systematic review of the literature was conducted to understand the sustainable bonds market relevance, its instruments, and guidance. Secondly, an academic and grey literature mapping was performed, regarding the concepts, stages, and agents involved in issuing gender bonds. In the third stage, it was conducted semi-structured interviews with professionals from the capital market to add the practitioners\' perspectives. Thus, the main contributions of this study were: (a) identify the main barriers and challenges both in the gender bond process issuance and its agents involved, opening the path to building mitigation actions; (b) contribute to the still incipient literature on the subject; (c) arouse interest in this debt instrument, bringing transparency to the use of proceeds raised; (d) contribute to gender equality.