Women in tech hiring decline 2023 to 2025

We’re making progress in equity and diversity within the venture and startup ecosystem, right? Wrong. Sorry to start off 2025 with a buzzkill but the numbers don’t lie. Progress is stagnant. Each year since 2018, Carta has reported on equity and diversity in the venture ecosystem, analyzing data from tens of thousands of startups and over 1.5 million employees to examine how opportunities are distributed across race and gender. The 2024 report highlights persistent inequities and in many cases, a reversal in progress of recent years. 👎🏾 Women represent only 33% of new hires in equity-receiving roles. The lowest since 2018. 👎🏾 The rate of new hires who were women rose steadily throughout the late 2010s and early 2020s, climbing from 30% in 2016 to 37% in 2021. Now, it’s fallen two straight years. 👎🏾 The average man who’s hired as a manager or executive receives more equity value than the average woman hired as a manager or executive. 👎🏾 Only 17% of sales executives are women, showcasing a critical gap in leadership diversity. 👎🏾 Black talent saw new hire representation drop to just 5%, the lowest since 2018. 👎🏾 Racial and ethnic diversity has been decreasing at startups across the board. In every major job function, the percentage of new hires from non-white racial and ethnic backgrounds has been lower from 2022 through 2024 than it was from 2019 through 2021. We live in a world where we have AI that can write code, yet we still can’t figure out how to build more equitable workplaces?! Actions speak louder than words and what this is showing is that we just don’t care. I thought about using this post to talk about what tech can do to be more inclusive and to highlight amazing organizations doing this work like Wednesday Women, Sistas In Sales, Women in Revenue, Success in Black, Women in Sales and so many others... But I’ll save that for another post. For now, I’m left with more questions than solutions. Why are we moving backward? ❓ What biases (explicit or implicit) are shaping hiring, promotion, and retention decisions? ❓ How does the myth of meritocracy mask the structural barriers that keep underrepresented talent from thriving? ❓ What role does leadership play in perpetuating, or dismantling, these inequities? ❓ Why are we failing to translate diversity goals into tangible, lasting change? We have the tools to track and measure these disparities. But tools alone won’t fix what’s broken. Until we examine the systemic roots of the problem, we’re just going to keep spinning our wheels.

🔹 Top-level positions remain narrowly accessible for women 🔹 Despite women nearing half of entry-level positions, their representation in C-suite roles remains below one-quarter. What was once seen as a promising trend in women’s leadership hiring has taken a downturn. The percentage dropped from 37.5% in 2023 to 36.9%, and further declined to 36.4% in early 2024, falling below 2021 levels. LinkedIn research shows that worsening macroeconomic conditions have contributed to this decline in hiring women for senior leadership roles. However, higher representation of women in the workforce strengthens resilience against setbacks during economic downturns. Read more in "Global Gender Gap Report 2024" from World Economic Forum: https://shorturl.at/gk7mF How is your organization ensuring women's advancement to leadership roles remains a priority? #WomenInLeadership #GenderEquality