For women, these public discussions have set the stage for greater equality in areas like education, professional advancement, income growth and consumer power. For corporates and investors that embrace these trends, there are numerous benefits, from more nuanced corporate governance and performance to bottom-line growth.  

A recent duo of reports from Morgan Stanley Research approaches this theme from two angles. First, how a growing population of prime working-age women in the U.S.—many single and focused on career—will have greater representation in the labor force, help boost wages and create potentially large tailwinds in a number of consumer products categories.

In a second report, the Quantitative Equity Research team shares a proprietary framework to help investors identify the most gender-diverse companies, which tend to be larger, have better stock returns and skew toward lower volatility.