Gender Gap in Employee Equity Compensation

In a September 17 report, The Gap Table: Analyzing the gender gap in equity, Carta (formerly eShares) and a collection of angel investors examined the "capitalization tables," which list the owners of companies and how much they own, for 6,000 of Carta's client companies representing over 180,000 employees and $45 billion in equity value. Their main findings are:

• Women make up 35% of equity-holding employees, but hold only 20% of employee equity.
• Female equity-holding employees own just 47 cents for every dollar male employees own.
• Women represent 29% of employees at companies with up to 10 employees. Female representation doesn't exceed 40% until companies approach 400 employees.

The analysis draws on employees who hold at least one stock option or restricted stock unit (RSU), so the conclusions above do not include those employees who do not hold any equity compensation. The findings indicate that women hold less equity compensation per capita than do men, and in addition, women are less likely to hold any equity than are men: "the percentage of female employees with option grants in venture-backed companies (35%) is significantly lower than the overall private labor force participation rate" of 47%.