Women entrepreneurs own less equity in Silicon Valley

The new study, called Table Stakes, was conducted by the equity management platform Carta.

It compiled data from over 3 lakh employees, nearly 10,000 companies, and over 25,000 founders.

Carta found that women hold 49 cents for every dollar in stock options men do. However, the gender gap is a 2% improvement from last year, when Carta published its first gender equity gap report.

Among C-suite positions, the chief marketing officer (CMO) and chief operating officer (COO) roles- predominantly occupied by women- are awarded less equity.

While the most highly-compensated executive roles remained dominated by men, only 1 in 8 CEOs are women.

Notably, CEOs get more than double the equity of the next-highest compensated executive.

Contrarily, CMOs, the role where women are best-represented (32%), were the worst-compensated.

The study also found that among engineers, at every level, there were less than 20% women. Comparing junior and mid-level employees, engineers receive an average of over double the equity grants as compared to other departments.

And even though women accounted for a third of the participants in the study, they only held 11% of the total equity wealth.

Carta Vice-President (Marketing), Emily Kramer, told CNBC, "Women aren't in the right roles at the right time in a company's lifecycle," adding that roles like founders, investors and early engineers- which have "outsized equity"- have fewer women representation.

She added, "We need to take a look at how the start-up and VC ecosystem values the work and talents of women. We can do better."