All-Female Founding Teams Received Just 2.3% of Global VC in 2024, Data Shows Persistent Funding Gap

All-female founding teams captured just 2.3% of global venture capital invested in 2024, while all-male teams accounted for 83.6% of the total, according to data compiled from industry funding trackers and cited in recent analysis of female entrepreneurship trends. The figures underscore a persistent and stark imbalance in venture capital allocation, even as the broader narrative around female entrepreneurship — new business formation, angel investing participation and public visibility of women founders — has shown notable momentum in recent years.

The disconnect between rising female entrepreneurial activity and stagnant venture funding share is one of the more closely scrutinised paradoxes in the startup ecosystem. Mixed-gender teams that include at least one female co-founder have generally captured a meaningfully larger share of venture dollars than all-female teams, a pattern researchers attribute to a combination of factors, including continued underrepresentation of women in venture capital decision-making roles and persistent bias in how investors evaluate pitches from women-led teams.

Anu Duggal, founding partner of the Female Founders Fund, has previously described the scale of effort required to raise capital as a woman investor building a dedicated vehicle for women-led companies, noting that it took roughly 700 investor meetings to secure $5.85 million in early fund commitments — an illustration of the barriers that persist even for investors explicitly focused on closing the funding gap, let alone the founders that dedicated vehicle exists to support.

Geography adds further texture to the picture. Research comparing funding patterns across regions has found that low-income countries see a notably higher proportion of women entrepreneurs growing their businesses — roughly one in three, compared with about one in four globally — even as access to formal venture capital in many of those same markets remains thin. In wealthier markets with more developed venture ecosystems, the Nordic countries, particularly Finland and Denmark, have emerged as relative leaders in proportional funding directed toward women-led companies.

Efforts to address the imbalance have taken multiple forms. Dedicated funding vehicles focused exclusively on women-led companies have proliferated, alongside grant programmes, accelerator cohorts and public-sector initiatives such as Canada's Women Entrepreneurship Strategy, which recently received a fresh $173.7 million, five-year funding commitment to expand access to financing, training and networks for women entrepreneurs. In the European Union, the Women TechEU programme offers up to €75,000 in equity-free grants alongside mentoring specifically for women-led deep-tech startups, targeting a segment where female founder representation has historically lagged even further behind the broader startup population.

Whether these targeted interventions are sufficient to meaningfully shift the aggregate funding statistics remains an open question among researchers and practitioners. Advocates argue that dedicated funds and grants play a critical role in providing proof points and de-risking women-led companies for mainstream venture capital. Critics counter that without structural change in the composition of venture capital decision-makers, targeted programmes risk remaining a parallel track rather than closing the gap within the mainstream venture ecosystem.

For now, the data offers a sobering counterpoint to more optimistic narratives about the state of female entrepreneurship. Rising rates of business formation among women, growing participation in angel investing, and increased visibility for women founders and fund managers represent genuine progress on several fronts. But at the level that ultimately determines which companies scale, hire and compete globally — venture capital allocation — the numbers suggest the gap between women's growing entrepreneurial ambition and the capital available to fund it remains substantial.