Where Are All the Female Private Equity Managers?

The gender imbalance in the private equity industry improved slightly since last year, but not enough to move the needle, according to Preqin’s data.

Women made up just 11.7% of overall senior leadership roles globally this year, Preqin said.

“The overall global proportion of leadership roles in private equity occupied by women remains markedly low,” the report said. “Underrepresentation of women in private equity remains an issue acknowledged by the industry and organizations across the world continue pushing for change.”

CIO magazine will continue to investigate into the missing women of asset management by devoting the first day of the 2015 CIO Summit to discuss why, and what can be done to level the playing field and open the industry to the half of the population largely still excluded.

The lack of women was particularly marked among buyout firms, the data showed, with just 10.5% in senior positions. This low figure, however, was an improvement from 8.7% in 2013.

Venture capital saw the highest rise in the proportion of women in leadership roles, with an average of 14.8% in 2015 compared to 11.2% over the past two years. Infrastructure came in second with 14% of women in senior positions this year, Preqin also found, an increase from 11.7% in 2014.

Regionally, there was a 2.7 percentage point boost in the number of female senior private equity managers in North America, Europe, and Asia, the report said.

Specifically, Asian firms hired the most women in high-level positions, according to Preqin. This year, 14.5% of senior private equity managers are women, up from 11.8% last year.

The percentage was lower in North America, with just 13.7% of leadership roles held by women in 2015, while only 13.7% of high-level European managers were women.

Preqin’s data concluded the percentage of women in senior positions was highly correlated with the number of total high-level executives.

In firms with five or fewer people, only 9.7% of senior employees were women, while an average of 13.9% of leadership roles were filled by women at firms with more than 20 senior executives.

Preqin PE Women