Gender equality in VC firms, China is showing the example

emma3095
22 nov. 2016
3 min de lecture

Over the past years, gender equality has been an important topic in the workplace, VC firms were not an exception, as a lot of Western VC have been accused of gender discrimination. In China, however, it's quite the opposite.

TechCrunch recently named the top five venture capital institutions - MassChallenge, SOSV, VTF Capital, Metamorphic Ventures and Signatures Capital. Four of these organizations simply do not have female investment partners. In this regard, Chinese women in the workplace surpass their western counterparts.

According to Bloomberg statistics, in the US top VC firms, women investment partners account for only about 10%, and only half of the companies have female partners. In China, by contrast, 17% of the investment partners are women, 80% of the companies have at least one female partner. In addition, the world's largest women-founded venture capital fund is also established in China.

If not for the Bloomberg report, probably no one noticed Chen Xiaohong and her H Capital. Founded in 2002, H Capital is a US-based equity investment firm. In 2012, Chen Xiaohong joined the company and became its founder in China. Previously, she was a Tiger Global Fund partner. New Oriental, Jingdong Mall, YY, among many others, were her investment cases. Compared with male investors, Chen Xiaohong thinks that women are more likely to tell the entrepreneurs: "You are wrong". Chen also recently raised a $ 500 million fund, which is the largest fund ever raised by a woman, according to research firm Preqin, making the total amount of funds that she manages $ 1 billion. In the United States, the largest fund held by a woman is only half the size.

Another female investor - the partner and CEO of True Fund, AiZhi Fang has a team of 4 female investors out of 9 team members. In a female entrepreneurial theme conference held by Goldman Sachs, she said: “Our investments focus on the projects regardless of the gender of the entrepreneurs." They currently invest in more than 30 female founders or co-founders.

Bloomberg reported that women are more easily to break through the existing situation in the open competitive environment whereas more usually tightly bound in an inherent mode. In Why I Left Goldman Sachs, Greg Smith described his work in Wall Street in detail. When his colleagues gathered at the bar, the few women colleagues inevitably became the topic of the conversation among males - “The women in that department are really hot!".

In April, TechCrunch used its global venture capital data to publish a comprehensive report on women's venture capital practitioners*. They selected 826 organizations with relatively high number of people out of 2300 venture capital institutions and micro-funds that have been active since 2014, female practitioners constitutes 22% of employees with most of who in high positions such as investment manager, vice president and chief investment officer. .

The proportion of Chinese women in investment institutions is higher than in other countries, mainly due to the fact that the domestic entrepreneurial boom has only started to flourish in recent years. Women have the same industry opportunities as men in VC, PE and entrepreneurship. And many traditional multinational companies have begun to include women's career development as a part of corporate D & I (Diversity and Inclusiveness).

CB Insights' statistics ranks Goldman Sachs as the top 10 unicorn companies investor in 2015, who assumes women lack the awareness of their own brand and image building in the workplace, resulting in unidentified contribution. Goldman Sachs's "10 000 women" program provides female executive directors with outstanding performance opportunities to increase their visibility at the top of the organization and develop their key skills to help them succeed in their careers.