While the private markets have made progress in diversity, equity and inclusion in recent years, there is still some way to go before it can be considered a successful endeavour.
In Private Equity International’s LP Perspectives Study 2025, only a third of investor respondents indicated they see ‘good’ DE&I among their GPs, while just 3 percent marked it as ‘excellent’. That’s a considerable slip on last year, when 41 percent of respondents saw their GPs’ DE&I performance as ‘good’ and 8 percent as ‘excellent’.
The private equity industry has been talking for some time about championing DE&I, yet real progress has been rather slow. “We have not seen the needle move meaningfully, which is a shame for those of us who are serious about DE&I,” Shami Nissan, partner and head of sustainability at Actis, told PEI in October. “We’re not in a great place, and there is much to do as an industry.”
According to research by McKinsey & Co, only 23 percent of all private equity investing roles globally are held by women, while women only account for 12 percent of positions at the managing director level and 9 percent of investment committees. Between 2021-22, the proportion of female investors in private markets globally only grew by 2 percentage points.
Other asset classes are experiencing similarly slow levels of growth. Affiliate title Venture Capital Journal has found that funds in which at least half of the founding partners are women only accounted for 3 percent of global venture fundraising in 2023. This is, however, up from 1.9 percent the previous year.
This year’s Women of Influence in Private Markets list shone a spotlight on 42 inspiring women working across alternatives asset classes. The 500-plus nominations were called from readers and industry professionals across several PEI Group titles: PEI, Infrastructure Investor, Private Debt Investor, PERE and Venture Capital Journal. For 2024’s list, for the first time, we decided to feature 42 rather than 60 women to allow more space to tell their stories and highlight their achievements.
The Women of Influence class of 2024 featured Carlyle’s head of global investment solutions and head of AlpInvest; a founding member of the EQT Exeter team; StepStone’s global head of responsible investment; and California State Teachers’ Retirement System’s first female director of real estate.
The winners told us that to improve female representation in private markets, the industry needs to work on attracting and retaining more women and candidates with diverse backgrounds. Additionally, mentoring may be an empowering tool.
“We still have underrepresentation, particularly in leadership positions, and we still have an enduring gender pay gap. Pleasingly, there are obviously a number of organisations that do offer mentoring, which is great,” said Alexia Savva, head of responsible investment at Infracapital and representative of the Infrastructure Industry Foundation.
“We’re in an environment – whether due to regulation, demand from stakeholders or belief in it driving stronger performance – where organisations are looking at bolstering their DE&I commitments, but I think a fair amount of work still needs to be done to bridge policies with actual initiatives and action that drive meaningful change.”
