Gender Initiatives

Women are heavily underrepresented in private equity and venture capital. In emerging markets, only 11 percent of senior investment professionals are women and only 7 percent of private equity and venture capital is invested in women-led businesses. Gender gaps in the representation of women as allocators and recipients of capital may be sub-optimal for investment returns, given that research points to outperformance of gender balanced teams over single-gender dominated teams. IFC believes that closing the gender gap in private equity and venture capital is important. IFC works across funds and investee companies to increase gender inclusiveness through targeted interventions for private equity funds, venture capital funds and portfolio companies. Given that the private equity and venture capital industry is still relatively nascent in emerging markets, action taken now has the potential to impact a long-term shift in the industry.