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Good News; Bad News

The good news: successful venture backed companies had a higher proportion of female executives then the non-successful companies.

The bad news: Only 7.1% of the executives in the successful companies were women, which more than twice the 3.1% rate at the non-successful companies.

This is from a new report "Women at the Wheel" (no not that "Women at the Wheel"; this one is answering the question "Do Female Executives Drive Start-Up Success?"). It found that companies have a greater chance of either going public, operating profitably or being sold for more money than they’ve raised when they have females acting as founders, board members, C-level officers, vice presidents and/or directors.

The Wall Street Journal article about the report brought out some of their own good news/bad news. I think my favorite is:

Attitudes about women are changing rapidly in the technology industry, where female participation continues to increase. This year, while two Bay Area investment firms (Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Pantheon Ventures) were sued by women for gender discrimination, the board of Yahoo Inc. named a pregnant Marissa Mayer as the company’s president and CEO.

Anyway you can get the whole report for free by filling out a form.

Thanks to FairerScience friend David Mortman for pointing this out.