Playing The Woman Card: 5 Ways To Invest In Female-Led Companies

Whatever your net worth, there are a growing number of ways to invest in women's success.

Last year State Street launched the SPDR SSGA Gender Diversity Index ETF (SHE), which invests in large-cap U.S. companies that rank high in their sectors for women in senior management. With an annual expense of just 20 basis points, it already has more than $350 million in assets.

PAX World Investments offers the three-year-old Ellevate Global Women's Index Fund (PXWEX) in concert with Sallie Krawcheck, the cofounder of ElleVest. There's a 90-basis-point annual charge and $1,000 investment minimum. The fund has $175 million in assets and has beaten the global-equity benchmark MSCI World Index.

Motif Investing, an online platform that packages fractional shares of individual stocks into portfolios, allows you to buy into its No Glass Ceiling Motif, for a $9.95 trading fee, with a $250 minimum. It's made up of public companies run by women, including PepsiCo, IBM, Oracle, Lockheed Martin and Campbell Soup. (You can customize it further for $4.95 per stock trade.)

Private wealth managers have gotten into the game. U.S. Trust's Women & Girls Equality Strategy, with a $75,000 minimum investment, picks from companies that score high on equal pay and a positive media portrayal of women. Morgan Stanley's Parity Portfolio, with a $100,000 minimum, invests in companies with at least three women board members and policies favorable to women.

While Rethink Impact is now closed to new investors, other VC partnerships investing in women are still raising funds. Minimum investments range from $10,000 for the New Hampshire-based Impact New Hampshire to $250,000 for True Wealth Ventures, based in Austin, Texas.