Women hold only around 10% of the board positions in biotech firms, found a recent report on the biotech gender gap by Liftstream, a life sciences recruitment company.

This finding is based on an analysis of the boards of 177 biotech firms that filed to go public between 2012 and 2015. This mirrors the results of a related study from the same group that looked at 1,491 therapeutic and diagnostic companies and found that women held 11% of board seats in Europe and 10% of those seats in the United States. These counts are down from a 19% average stake across all industries, as reported by a broader analysis of Fortune 1000 companies.

The new study focused specifically on companies that are undergoing initial public offerings (IPOs), because it is a transformative stage in terms of financing, ownership and governance structures. As such, the authors of the report argue, it offers an “opportunity to refresh and reconstitute [the] boards”. Although they found minor improvements in diversity immediately after an IPO, this trend was not sustained over time.

The report also makes a business case for the benefits of gender balance. It found that boards with both men and women experienced an average 19% increase in share price, whereas all-male boards experienced a 9% decrease in share price.

Given the slow pace of change, the authors estimate that it will take until 2036 for women to hold even 30% of biotech board positions. “This poor prognosis means there is a need for interventional approaches to accelerate the cadence of this change,” they argue. Some such efforts are being trialled (Nat. Med. 23, 141–143; 2017).