Transforming Capital for the Next Era 2025

On average across the 11 economies with available data, women account for 42.2% of the entry-level workforce in PE/VC firms. Their representation declines to 35.1% at mid-level management and further drops to 19.9% at the top level. While women’s representation is below the industry average across all seniority levels, the most pronounced decline occurs between mid- and top-level management. The representation ratio, measuring women’s share at one level relative to the level below, shows a notably sharper drop over this transition in PE/VC firms than in the finance industry overall or among capital market institutions. By contrast, the pipeline ratio from entry- to mid- level management is broadly similar across all three groups (Figure 6).Taken together, these patterns indicate that women hold a smaller share of roles associated with financial decision-making, particularly in subindustries such as capital markets, which have a relatively small employment base but play a central role in capital allocation. Given the structural and functional characteristics of the finance industry, where smaller, market-oriented segments tend to have broader economic reach while larger, labour- intensive segments employ a greater share of women, more detailed and disaggregated data is needed to understand how financial influence is distributed and the extent to which decision-making power reflects a balanced gender representation, helping institutions target their talent strategies more effectively. The under-representation of women in investment firms may have a downstream effect on the gender balance of the companies that are financed as well as the diversity of markets these companies serve. Male-founded companies continue to take a disproportionate share of venture capital deal activity and absorb most of the invested capital, wherever gender-disaggregated data is available. PitchBook9 data covering high-income economies illustrates the imbalance: as of October 2025, in the US, start-ups founded exclusively by women accounted for only 5.9% of total venture capital deal count, compared with 17.6% for start-ups co-founded by men and women. In terms of deal value, the gap is even wider: all-female-founded start-ups attracted just 1.2% of venture capital vs. 39.3% for mixed-gender founding teams. The picture is similar in Europe, where in 2024, all-female-founded start-ups captured 4.6% of deal count and 1.5% of deal value, compared with 19.4% and 15.9% respectively for mixed-gender teams (Figure 7). Additional studies in emerging markets confirm this pattern.10 2.3 Women in private capital: Recipients Distribution of venture capital deal count and deal flow by founders’ gender (values as of October 2025)FIGURE 7 All female founders Female and male founders All male foundersDistribution of deal count by founders' gender Distribution of deal flow by founders' gender United States Europe0%20%40%60%80%100% United States Europe0%20%40%60%80%100% 5.9%17.6%76.5% 76.0% 19.4%39.3%59.5% 82.6% 15.9% 1.2% 1.5% 4.6% Source: World Economic Forum calculations, based on PitchBook US11 and Europe VC12 female founders dashboards Transforming Capital for the Next Era: Gender Parity and the Expansion of the Investable Frontier 11