It’s time for women to stop giving each other career advice and start giving cash instead

Sallie Krawcheck doesn’t have a particular problem with women’s conferences. As the former CEO of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, she gets non-stop invites to headline events attended exclusively by the highest ranking women in business.

It’s what usually comes after the conference that she doesn’t like: Nothing. No job recommendations, no offers to invest, none of the help-me-help-you exchange of referrals for box seats that is the stuff of old boys’ club legend.

But a few days after revealing a $9 million Series B round in Ellevest, her 4-month-old investing platform, Krawcheck stopped by LinkedIn to talk about how she’s breaking women’s follow-through issues. And she’s getting help from her investors, a who’s who of women with money: Tennis star Venus Williams, Ariel Investments President Mellody Hobson, Aspect Ventures President Theresia Gouw and several other notable women in tech and finance.

“Women are starting to do what men have been doing for forever,” said Krawcheck. “We are in this really interesting moment where we are moving from women going to conferences and just supporting each other to saying, ‘Fu*k it. I am going to invest my money in you.’ It is not just about empowerment. It’s about giving and recognizing power.”

The Ellevest investment, while high profile, will barely make a dent in the men’s club. The percentage of capital going to women-led startups has gone largely unchanged for the past few decades, says Sharon Vosmek, an investor whose firm Astia Angels also joined Ellevest’s Series B round. Depending on what reports you look at, U.S. startups led by women are getting around 2 to 8 percent of total capital deployed by private markets. Firms with female investors in leadership positions tend to invest in more women-led teams, yet the number of women in both venture capital and angel investing has similarly gone unchanged.

“Most people don’t look at themselves and say they are against women. It is all subconscious. So, when you start to bring it up, people start to change.” -- Venus Williams

Like Krawcheck, Vosmek believes the industry needs to commit to investing in more women-led companies -- not just mentoring them. At White House Demo Day last year, the National Venture Capital Association pledged to supporting more women-led firms, but promised no advances in capital. Vosmek thinks that’s simply unacceptable.

“The checks are still not being written,” she said. “There is no shortage of investment opportunities. This is not a pipeline problem. The notion that we are going to fix the funding gap by mentoring more women is highly problematic.”

While she is mostly known for her successful career in professional tennis, Venus Williams is now taking some time off the court to address the problem Vosmek spelled out.  The first black American woman to become a World No. 1 tennis champion, Williams campaigned for female tennis pros to earn as much money as their male peers. While she doesn’t claim to know a lot about the business world, she does see similarities between the battles fought by female athletes for equality and those women in business continue to face.

“As a professional athlete, if you’re good enough you can get there,” she said. “People want you at their tournament. There are no barriers if you can win. For professional women, there can be barriers. There could be people thinking that you can’t do it as well as he does.”

Krawcheck is bullish that those barriers will lessen as more take more control of their financial futures. While women can’t control if there is a gender pay gap at their firm or if they have a boss that doesn’t support them, they can control how they invest their money

“Women talk so much about the gender pay gap, but very few people are talking about the gender investing gap,” she said. “It’s not really apart of the public conscious right now. Investing is something that women can control. It’s something they can do.”