Study of ~10K startups: women represent 13% of founders but own 7% of founder equity; 31% of all equity owners are women, but hold 6% of total startup equity
Female entrepreneurs have less equity in their own companies than do male entrepreneurs, according to a new report from Carta.
AxiosKia Kokalitcheva
Context & Ripple Effects
Carta has been building this dataset for years: its earlier anonymized-cap-table study found female founders held 39 cents of equity for every dollar a male founder held across more than 6,000 US companies. This new report scales to roughly 10,000 startups and widens the lens beyond founders to all equity holders.
The headline numbers land on top of a known funding gap — all-female founding teams drew only ~2.2% of the $85B VCs invested in 2017 — and recent PitchBook counts showing female cofounders still on just 14% of US unicorns. Less capital raised means smaller stakes granted, so the equity shortfall compounds the funding shortfall.
First-order effects
Female founders at the ~10,000 startups studied hold roughly half the founder equity their male counterparts do (7% vs. a 13% share of founders), and the 31%-of-holders-vs-6%-of-equity split shows the discount extends to female employees and angels, not just founders.
Boards and investors now have a cap-table benchmark from Carta itself, the platform holding the records — making individual company equity splits comparable against an industry baseline for the first time at this scale.
Second-order effects
Because startup equity is the core of tech compensation, the gap pressures hiring and retention: candidates and current employees can price their own offers against Carta's published distribution, giving negotiating leverage to women joining early-stage teams.
VCs backing these cap tables face a diligence question — whether the discount reflects valuation terms, option grants, or who gets invited onto cap tables — and funds that can show parity gain a pitch advantage as LPs scrutinize portfolio-level diversity data.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds through exits, women's share of startup-derived wealth stays structurally suppressed: combined with the thin pipeline of female-founded companies that reach funding at all, the compounding effect is fewer women positioned as repeat founders or angel investors funding the next cohort.
Cap-table platforms like Carta become de facto regulators of disclosure — ownership gaps that were once invisible inside private companies become annually publishable benchmarks, shifting accountability from anecdote to audited data.
The trend: Private-market cap-table data is turning the gender equity gap in startups from an anecdotal complaint into a recurring, benchmarked metric that tracks alongside the funding-gap statistics.
Women employees own just 49 cents on the dollar in equity for every dollar men own. This needs to change. Find out what you can do at @tablestakes http://tablestakes.com/study pic.twitter.com/uKvlyPCP7z
Women are 13% of startup founders, but only 7% of founder equity 34% startup employees, 20% startup employee equity 31% equity owners, 6% total startup equity 20% of equity holders worth $1M+ 15% of $10M+ 12% of $100M+ Please share race data, too @cartainc https://www.axios.com/.…
Great data visualisation in this report on the gender equity gap. However, I'd love to see any information on the race equity gap and the intersection of both race and gender since the data might be skewed towards white women as the default. https://twitter.com/...
13% of venture-backed founders are women, but these founders hold less than 7% of the equity value. See more from our @tablestakes study: http://tablestakes.com/study https://twitter.com/...
More senior roles typically get more equity. The highest compensated c-suite roles are dominated by men We analyzed the data in 4 ways to help better understand the equity gap. @EmilyKramer @ErinBoehmer @Raff_OutLoud @cartainc @tablestakes https://tablestakes.com/study/ https://t…
1/Thanks @carta for demystifying startup equity with #tablestakes. We're proud to partner on this study. 💵Female employees own $0.49 equity for every $1.00 men own 📊96% of equity is held by the top 20% 👩💻Of the wealthiest owners, only 9% are women https://tablestakes.com/study/
• Only 1 in 8 CEOs is a woman • CEOs get more than 2X the equity of the next executive • Women own just 11% of founder and employee equity Hire more women. Fund more women. https://tablestakes.com/study/ https://twitter.com/...
Today, we're proud to release the @tablestakes study—a deep dive into the massive gender gap in equity. Check it out and learn how you can join us in turning the [cap] tables: https://tablestakes.com/study/ https://twitter.com/...
Shocking stats in #tablestake: A study shows that women own just 11% of founder and employee equity, and hold 26 cents in equity for every dollar men own. Thanks @cartainc @tablestakes @HashtagAngels for shining a light on these numbers https://tablestakes.com/study/
2 out of 5 businesses in the US are owned by women. Yet women represent only 13% of startup founders. The fact that the gatekeepers to startup wealth (VCs) like to give money to people who look like them undergirds lack of diversity across all of tech https://www.axios.com/...
We all know the gender pay gap. However, wealth is created through equity ownership on the cap table. @tablestakes study by @cartainc shows that women own just 11% of founder and employee equity, and hold 26 cents in equity for every dollar men own. https://tablestakes.com/study/
Female entrepreneurs have less equity in their own companies than do male entrepreneurs, according to a new report. It directly contributes to the gender wealth gap. https://www.axios.com/...