Why aren't there more female founders?
There is a large gap in the amount of funding given to women and research sheds light on the this important question: why do investors discount women?
The title of entrepreneur is – whether we like it or not – deeply engrained as the image of a man.
In the latest episode of The Why podcast, host Katie Pisa met with Olenka Kacperczyk, Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at London Business School, to discuss her research on the gender gap in entrepreneurship. The two discuss this big question: Where are all the missing female entrepreneurs?
Olenka sheds light on her research findings, the reasons behind this gap and what we as businesses, leaders and societies can do to help narrow the gap. While women make up half the population, among all the VC-backed ventures in her target research of the US, only 10% were founded by women.
“There is a systematic segregation of women across ventures”
Female entrepreneurs are challenged during the entire process of entrepreneurship, everything from administrative barriers and discriminatory wording in interviews for funding, contributes to holding women back when it comes to starting their own ventures.
Olenka’s interest in the topic was partly based on her own family who became entrepreneurs in the post-Communist period in Poland. Watching them venture into business inspired her research and interest in the topic of inequality in entrepreneurship.
Why is there a gap at the investment stage, and why do investors discount women? These are a few of the important questions Olenka answers in the podcast.
Listen to the conversation to learn more about why this gap still exists.
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Read the full research here.
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