Carta Helps Women In Silicon Valley Facing Huge Equity Gap

By CIOReview | Wednesday, November 20, 2019

The percentage of women millionaires in Silicon Valley falls as they don’t hold higher positions.

Fremont, CA: It is evident with companies like Uber Technologies Inc., Slack Technologies Inc., and Pinterest Inc going public this year that Silicon Valley will mint many millionaires. According to a study conducted by Carta, an equity management platform, on 300,000 employees at 10,000-plus companies, it was found that 4 in 5 paper millionaires are men and not women. Men in C-suite roles hold the jobs that land the most significant equity packages. As wealth goes up, the percentage of women millionaires falls as they don’t hold positions like CEOs, CFOs, or founders.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, among the world’s 500 wealthiest people, only two are female technology billionaires. The most common executive role held by women is the chief marketing officer having the lowest median equity award, which is 39% less than that of CFOs. Women in Silicon Valley are facing a vast equity gap. Carta identified this when women held 47 cents of equity for every dollar of equity men held. And this year, there is a slight improvement as women hold 49 cents, which is a two percentage point increase from last year. Although women make up more than a third of all employees, they hold only 20% of equity wealth.

The gender equity gap arises from a variety of interconnected reasons. Employees who join earlier get better stock options than those who join later and startups will have less proportion of women. Also, according to the data pulled by Carta, women make up only 13 percent of all founders. Women also claim that they don’t know what to question during opaque salary negotiations and how that would affect their financial future. Some say that they do not know how to ask for refresh grants after getting promoted several times while some presume that they did not know what equity or options were, as per WeWork.

Carta provides educational materials to teach women how to negotiate their liquidity preferences and ask for a fair equity offer upfront. It overhauls WeWork that did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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