Male-led businesses receive over six times more investment than female-led

New research has revealed that funding into new UK businesses still weighs heavily in favour of male-led businesses – who receive 6.2 times more in funding than women owned ones.

Coming just after International Women’s Day 2023, the research highlights that there’s still a lot of progress to be made before women’s new businesses are treated equally to men’s. Please see the table below breaking down the funding types by male-led, female-led, and male and female led businesses:

As a consequence, women are having to bootstrap/self-fund their new businesses more – 50% in comparison to 32% of male-led. This type of funding has a higher chance of failure as well as more of a personal financial risk, which in turn feeds into the negative atmosphere and attitude that women are often faced with in business.

“Confidence is a huge issue”, says Sahar Hashemi, CEO of Buy Women Built. “If you feel the statistics are against you, no one will ever try.”

From the research, two of the main types of business funding – Angel Investment and Private Equity Funding – show the clear difference in funding between men and women owned businesses with both being 10% higher towards men. Businesses that have both a male and female leader also increase the rate of investment by 4% and 6% in these areas respectively.

Startups.co.uk writer and researcher Stephanie Lennox stated: “More female-led businesses were invested in this year – but the numbers are still exceptionally imbalanced, suggesting that the gender funding gap is still a significant issue for women in business today.