A fund company is offering a new way to invest in women: a fund that tracks companies' gender diversity.

Boston-based State Street Global Advisors’ SPDR SSGA Gender Diversity Index ETF began trading Tuesday morning—International Women's Day—on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol SHE.

SHE will encourage investment in companies that support gender diversity, but also may generate benefits for investors, said James Ross, executive vice president and the global head of SPDR Exchange Traded Funds at State Street, referring to studies that indicate companies with diverse leadership outperform their peers.

“The research is what really drove our decision,” Ross says. “It also allows people to invest with a purpose. We’re seeing a lot of interest from institutional investors and from individuals looking to make an impact but not give up their upside in return.”

U.S. women account for an average of just 16 percent of corporate executive team members worldwide, according to data cited by State Street.

The new ETF tracks the SSGA Gender Diversity Index, a large-cap index made up of companies with the highest levels of gender diversity within their boards of directors and senior leadership.

The index is comprised of 144 stocks from among the largest 1,000 listed companies in the U.S. Unlike other gender diversity indexes, SHE includes companies with diversity on their board of directors and in their senior leadership, meaning it looks at anyone at the vice president or managing director level or above, Ross says.

“Most of the products out there focused on gender diversity don’t look at senior leadership. They look at the board level and up,” Ross says. “They don’t drill down into the company. Our data set allows us to look at multiple components of gender diversity. We also wanted to design a product that wasn’t weighted to one industry or another.”

The index ranks companies by sector.

After a 2015 MSCI study exploring gender diversity on corporate boards showed that companies with at least three female board members outperformed their peers in total return on equity by more than 36 percent, institutional investors were expressing stronger interest in supporting gender diversity in corporate leadership, Ross says.

“We were doing a fair amount of research on behalf of our institutional clients and they found the results to be compelling,” Ross says. “That’s why we launched a fund.”

Inspired by the California State Teachers’ Retirement System’s efforts to promote gender diversity, State Street engaged in further research, composing an index of companies with female leadership.

Barclay’s Women in Leadership ETN, launched in 2014, has attracted about $28 million in funds, while Denver Investments’ Workplace Equality Portfolio ETF, also launched in 2014, has less than $10 million in assets. SHE could be different, Ross says.

“I think having a leading ETF sponsor offering the product and having the support of one of the largest pension funds will help,” Ross says.

To it’s benefit, SHE launches with $250 million from the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, which will invest another $250 million into the fund in coming months.

A portion of State Street’s revenue from SHE will be donated to non-profit organizations that help develop girls into leaders in business and science, the first SPDR ETF with a charitable component.

SHE carries an expense ration of 20 basis points.