On the male-dominated private-equity scene, a tiny but growing number of tough and talented females are securing leading roles.

Fresh out of Harvard in 1993, Christina Weaver Vest hit the campaign trail. The 22-year-old spent her first year out of school working as policy director for Richard Fisher, a Texas Democrat who was running for a U.S. Senate seat against Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison. Fisher's bid fell short (a former Brown Brothers executive, he's now chairman of the Dallas Fed), but for Vest, the experience was far from a total loss. Through Fisher, she established some terrific contacts -- none of whom turned out to be more important to her career than Tom Hicks, the Dallas-based buyout king and one of Fisher's friends. Hicks wound up hiring Vest as an analyst at his buyout firm, Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst, in February 1995. "I can count on one hand the number of women I knew in private equity when I joined," Vest recalls.

A year after she was hired, Vest, a Miami native, began to establish her bona ­fides at the otherwise entirely male operation. She helped work on the firm's April 1996 purchase of Ghirardelli Chocolate, which wound up being sold two years later for a delicious 63 percent return. In May 2001, in another so-called platform acquisition, she had her first leadership role in a deal, helping close the $335 million purchase of Pinnacle Foods, makers of Vlasic pickles and Swanson frozen ­dinners. Two years later, Hicks, Muse sold Pinnacle to JPMorgan's private-equity arm for more than twice what it had paid.

Today, Vest, 37, working out of Boston, is one of three partners at Hicks Equity Partners, the Dallas-based ­private-equity arm of Hicks Holdings, a family office. She's still doing big deals. Among the most recent trans­actions to benefit from the application of her Midas touch was the $3.5 billion acquisition, announced this past June, of Graham Packaging from Blackstone. It was her largest deal yet, one executed through a Hicks Equity Partners Special Purpose Acquisition Company, Hicks Acquisition Corp.

While Vest is more effective than ever, with 13 years of experience under her belt, she's still one of only a small number of women in the upper echelon of private equity.

Statistics on the percentage of women who hold top posts at private-equity firms are difficult to come by, but a cursory glance at the Web sites and ­public ­filings of the some of the largest, best-known firms begins to tell the tale.

Apollo, Blackstone and KKR all made public filings in advance of their IPOs or prospective IPOs. In them, they listed their top executives and managing directors. How many women are among those ranks? At Apollo, one out of 50; at Blackstone, five of 79; at KKR, zero out of 30. Bain, similarly, lists no female MDs.

Meanwhile, research cited by Condé Nast Portfolio magazine in May indicates that the top 10 private-equity firms (as ranked by transaction value) employ roughly 1,000 investment professionals. An analysis of the employment data by the magazine showed that only four women were partner-level ­dealmakers.

Quantifying what seems still to be conventional wisdom in financial services -- that the buyout world remains a boys' club, even as the rest of the money-management and trading industry is working hard to open the tent -- nevertheless ignores an equally intriguing fact: Slowly but surely, an increasing ­number of women are now spearheading deals and running deal shops.

Consider just a few of these private-equity trailblazers making their name in the industry:

• Warburg Pincus managing director Elizabeth Weatherman led her firm's $4.4 billion acquisition of Bausch & Lomb last autumn.
• Jackie Reses, the 38-year-old co-head of media at Apax Partners, recently helped pull off a $7.75 billion purchase of Cengage Learning, beating out a slew of big firms in the transaction, among them Bain Capital, Blackstone, Thomas H. Lee and Providence.
• Adrianna Ma, a 34-year-old principal at General Atlantic, was involved in the $2.8 billion acquisition of ConAgra's commodity-trading business this summer.
• Hadley Mullin, a mana­ging partner at TSG Consumer Partners, helped oversee the purchase of Pevonia Skincare earlier this year.

Mullin is a marvel of multitasking for the San Francisco–based niche firm; she structures deals, executes them and also helps run the portfolio companies. Her particular strength, she says, comes from her accountability and follow-through: "If I say something is going to get done by a certain time, people around me know it will get done on time."

Indeed, some women in the industry have formed their own niche firms that seek to embrace diversity, both in the outside world and within their firms. Molly Ashby, formerly of JPMorgan's private-equity group and the founder of nine-year-old Solera Capital, has put some $250 million to work in a wide portfolio of companies, several of which have an orientation to the female customer. Among Solera's group of holdings: Latina Media Ventures; Annie's, an organic-food company; and The Little Clinic, a unique, retail-based health-care company.

Says Ashby of founding ­Solera, "I wanted to start a firm that had a really strong emphasis on diversity and inclusion, while maintaining the best practices of private equity that I learned at JPMorgan." Has the challenge of being a woman in a male-­dominated field been difficult to overcome? "It is ­certainly different," she muses, "but I never found it to be an impediment. If you work hard and are a good colleague, you will gain respect within the industry."

Vest concurs with that sentiment. "With Tom Hicks as my mentor, the fact that I am a woman was never an issue," she says. "Integrity and judgment were what mattered most to him, not gender."

Having a more inclusive team does have its advantages. When Vest and Hicks did a deal for a ­family-owned business in Latin America, their combined dealmaking acumen, plus their considerations of the family dynamics also at play, helped bring the transaction to a successful close.

What, then, of the challenge of looking after one's own family while simultaneously competing in the corporate jungle? TSG's Mullin, who has a 3-year-old daughter at home, is unabashed when discussing her priorities both inside and outside the office. "I think people are often somewhat surprised that I have a family," she says. "I work hard, of course, but my family is my number-one priority. And I love that my daughter sees me go to work every day. When I get home at night, she asks me if I chased EBITDA during the day."

Many women in the industry downplay the notion that they've had to overcome significant barriers or break through glass ­ceilings to succeed in high finance. Perhaps such modesty, though, is just another form of the stoicism that many say has helped them triumph in an ­extraordinarily competitive ­environment.

"I'm not sure it even makes any sense to use the term glass ceiling anymore," says Gwyneth M. Ketterer, the COO of BSMB, formerly Bear Stearns Merchant Bank. "Women who don't pay attention to barriers, but instead look past them, are the ones who succeed on Wall Street. I don't think women have necessarily been offered the same opportunities as men in private equity. You do find that it's male-­centric. Some ­people are going to disagree with me on this, but it's true. But if you continue to harp on it, that's not how you break through."

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