Bain crypto fund apologises for tweet featuring only men on Women’s Day
The incident illustrates how much further corporate America has to go to achieve gender equality in the workplace. Women in the US earn on average 83 per cent of what men make – and much of the gender pay gap is due to their under-representation in the highest paying jobs and fields. A recent report found that female top executives at S&P 500 companies made only 75 per cent of what their male counterparts earned in 2020, the widest gap in nine years.
Some commenters on social media pointed out that Bain’s “mess up” wasn’t just the tweet or the photo collage of the men that accompanied it, but the fact that an all-male team could be assembled in the first place without anyone considering gender diversity beforehand. Others also noted that the original tweet thread included Mr Cohen explaining his prior connections to the new hires and how he chose them, highlighting how the “boys’ club” atmosphere in venture capital can perpetuate gender imbalances.
Bain Capital Ventures is one of the world’s biggest startup-investment firms, and its new crypto fund will invest in areas such as crypto start-ups and decentralised autonomous organisations, or DAOs. The company did not respond to a request for comment.
Venture capital firms have long had a reputation for lacking female representation. A report from Axios in 2019 found that less than 10 per cent of decision-makers at venture capital firms in the US were women.
Bloomberg Wealth