The ‘Bro IPO’ summer: Women are missing from boards and C-Suites in the current surge of public offerings

Leadership·diversity and inclusionThe ‘Bro IPO’ summer: Women are missing from boards and C-Suites in the current surge of public offeringsBy Lila MacLellanBy Lila MacLellanSenior WriterLila MacLellanSenior WriterLila MacLellan is a senior writer at Fortune, where she covers topics in leadership.SEE FULL BIO Most of the companies that have taken IPO-related actions this summer have fewer women than average on their boards and in their C-suites, according to new re

For some, the surge is a welcome sign of renewed optimism after tariff-related chaos in the spring threatened a mised IPO revival

But an analysis of recent IPO-related filings shows that women leaders are largely missing from the boards and executive teams at the vast majority of new public companies, despite years of calls for more diversity in corporate leadership

The data may even be an early signal of future losses for executive women, as DEI, already facing a backlash, is abandoned or sidelined, especially in the industry

Damion Rallis, cofounder of board data firm Free Float Analytics, combed through information 61 companies that filed IPO-related documents in the first two weeks of August

Rallis is now calling this the “Bro-PO market,” and said his findings were “crazy.”“We’ve given up our ideals

We’ve just given up,” he said on Free Float’s Pants podcast

Only seven of the 61 companies Rallis examined had two or more women on their boards, while only four listed two or more women executives

Stubhub listed one female executive on its team of five, and one female director on a board of seven

Bullish listed two executive leaders, both men, and one woman on its six-person board

For reference, women represent 30% of board members at Russell 3000 companies, according to recent studies, and 29% of C-suite roles, according to a 2024 McKinsey survey

In recent years, corporate boards have made gender and racial diversity a central focus of recruitment efforts, especially after Nasdaq issued a rule that said listed companies must disclose their board gender and diversity statistics

That directive was set to expand: Eventually, it would have imposed minimum diversity requirements or asked companies to explain why their boards weren’t diverse

But the company abandoned that mise this year, citing “legal developments related to board diversity requirements,” my colleague Emma Hinchliffe reported in February. “We continue to believe that successful boards benefit from diverse backgrounds and perspectives, and we will encourage them to take this apach,” Goldman told Fortune at the time

The Goldman Sachs rollback was one of many widely seen as a response to a long-running war on “woke” corporate policies that’s now backed by President Trump

Despite these policy shifts, most investors have come to expect companies to form diverse boards and C-suites as part of optimizing a leadership team

The bar is lower for “starter boards” of newly IPO’d companies, says Matt Moscardi, cofounder of Free Float Analytics

But he says he was still surprised that today’s fledgling public companies are not even nodding at market norms

Explore this year's list.