In honour of Women's History Month, here are 10 stats that offer a snapshot of where we're at on the road to gender parity in entrepreneurship
There are approximately 252 million women entrepreneurs around the world—and the numbers are rising every day.
Ask any VC with knowledge of the data, and they'll tell you that women entrepreneurs are “an underlooked asset class that is overperforming,” in the words of Jane VC founder Jennifer Neundorfer. From Emily Weiss' Glossier to Lucy Liu's Airwallex, both of which reached unicorn status last year, female founders are increasingly behind some of the world's biggest startups.
Boston Consulting Group found that despite the evident funding gap between male and female entrepreneurs, “startups founded and co-founded by women are significantly better financial investments. For every US dollar of funding, these startups generated 78 US cents, while male-founded startups generated less than half that—just 31 US cents.”
These stats are encouraging—but they don't tell the full picture. In honour of Women's History Month, here are 10 stats that offer a snapshot of the road to gender parity for female entrepreneurs.
21
Last year was a historic one for women entrepreneurs, with 21 female-founded unicorns being born, compared with 15 in 2018. The number of female-founded billion-dollar startups has grown slowly from four in 2013 to eight in 2017, jumping significantly in 2018 and 2019.
1/3
HSBC reports that over a third of women entrepreneurs face gender bias when raising capital. Multiple academic studies show that there is strong gender bias in many different elements of the pitching process, with one study finding that women are asked different questions than men when pitching to VCs.
Men were more likely to be asked ‘promotion’ questions, focused on potential gains, whereas women were asked more ‘preventative’ questions, focused on potential losses and risk mitigation. Harvard Business Review reports that “entrepreneurs who addressed promotion questions raised at least six times more money than those asked the prevention questions.”
See also: MFT Group Founder Mica Tan On Starting Her Multimillion-Dollar Investment Firm At 19
