'Won't invest in women CEOs': Sexism is alive and kicking in the VC space

It turns out there's still a lot of work to be done, reports Tech in Asia

China's investment and business world has the reputation of being more equitable than that of other Asian countries — or in some ways, Silicon Valley. 

It turns out there’s still a lot of work to be done.

"Rule number 10: we usually don’t invest in female CEOs," stated Luo Mingxiong from Jingbei Investment, an early-stage VC firm, in a public presentation last week in Beijing.

"It’s not because of any kind of prejudice. Just think about it carefully […] besides giving birth to children, what can women do better than men? Nothing," added a blog post from the VC firm summarising Luo’s speech. "If the company CEO is a man, but a lot of the chairmen are women, we typically won’t invest in either. Why? Because it shows that the entrepreneur […] can’t recruit equally excellent and ambitious male executives."

"I don’t think it’s as uncommon as we hope," Rui Ma, a former investor at 500 Startups, tells Tech in Asia. "His reasons are pretty common. Some people will say: don’t invest in single girls [because] they’re unstable."

According to the Grant Thornton International Business Report for 2016, China has a higher percentage of women in senior roles compared to the global average – 30 per cent versus 24. In the country’s investment world, quite a few institutions are lead by women, such as Anna Fang, CEO of ZhenFund, one of China’s leading seed funds, and Chen Xiaohong, founder of H Capital, a China-focused VC firm.

Despite the relatively high representation of women, strong prejudices remain, particularly when it comes to defining what women are good at, and what they’re not. This is an excerpt from Tech in Asia. You can read the full article here.