What you probably already know: The U.S. market for initial public offerings is stronger than it’s been in recent years. In this year’s second quarter, IPOs increased 16% compared to the same quarter in 2024, with 50 offerings raising more than $8 billion. In June alone, nine of the 16 IPOs raised more than $50 million, including the two largest deals of the quarter. While 2025 activity still significantly lags behind the IPO blitz of 2021, the second quarter rebound has stirred optimism in the market’s resilience despite facing headwinds earlier in the year. But as IPO activity takes one step forward, board and C-suite diversity is taking two steps back.
Why? Men represent the overwhelming majority of leadership at new public companies, according to a recent analysis of IPO filings by Damion Rallis, co-founder of board data firm Free Float Analytics. Of the 61 companies that filed IPO-related documents in the first half of August, nearly 88% had just one or no women on their board of directors, and 93% had one or no women executives. Just seven companies had at least two women on their boards, while four had at least two women in their C-suite. In total, women accounted for 12% of the 349 directors and 11% of the 205 executives. By comparison, women held 30.4% of board seats on Russell 3000 companies by the end of the first quarter in 2025.
What it means: Tech firms are leading the recent uptick in IPO activity, particularly AI, fintech, and green energy. While the gender gap within the tech workforce is a persistent — and widely known — issue, the gap is especially pronounced among senior leadership roles within STEM companies. But the problem isn’t unique to tech companies. Across the board, women entrepreneurs face significant challenges in securing funding, making crucial connections, and scaling businesses to the size required for an IPO. There’s also the concept of “homosocial reproduction,” in which people — in this case, corporate leaders and investors — tend to work with others similar to themselves, perpetuating male-centric cycles. After discovering women leaders were vastly underrepresented among the latest companies to go public, Rallis dubbed the situation a “Bro-PO market.” He said on Free Float’s Business Pants podcast, “We’ve given up our ideals. We’ve just given up.”
What happens next: Shifts in the DEI landscape could push corporate parity goals, especially in the tech industry, further into the background despite ample research that indicates board diversity is better for business. In 2020, Goldman Sachs announced it would take a company public only if it had at least one diverse board member. The bank ended that policy earlier this year, and a federal appeals court also recently ended a similar Nasdaq-issued diversity rule.
— Story by Cambrie Juarez
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