If private equity dealmakers are a tiny economic elite, they are a narrow one, too. A Bloomberg analysis found that women fill only 8% of senior investment roles globally at the 10 largest firms that use debt to buy companies. Only one or two women are present in top positions on the buyout investment teams of most firms, which are generally made up of dozens of executives. “There is a huge retention problem, since nothing has materially changed at the top,” says Nori Gerardo Lietz, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School.