Women-owned businesses are not getting a fair shot at capital. And the gap between investment in male-founded versus female-founded companies is not a minor statistical quirk. It’s a structural inequity—one that’s costing the entire economy, not just the women being overlooked.
The Numbers Are Hard to Ignore
In 2024, all-female founding teams received just 2.3% of the $289 billion invested globally in venture capital—a total of $6.7 billion, according to data from Founders Forum. Male-only teams, by contrast, captured 83.6%, or $241.9 billion. Mixed-gender teams claimed the remaining 14.1%.
In the United States specifically, the picture darkened further: PitchBook’s 2024 Female Founders in the VC Ecosystem report found that companies founded solely by women garnered just 1% of total capital invested in US venture-backed startups—down from 2% the year before. This isn’t a blip. Harvard Kennedy School research puts the 30-year average share of VC funding for all-female founders at 2.4%. For three decades, it has barely moved.
The gap in deal valuation compounds the problem. The average female-founded company at the late or venture-growth stage was valued at $46.8 million in 2024, versus the US average of $67 million. Less capital in. Lower valuations throughout. Fewer resources to grow.
So What’s Driving It?
The reasons are layered, but they start at the top. Women currently make up just 17.3% of decision-makers at US venture capital firms with over $50 million in assets under management. When 83% of the people writing checks share a similar background and frame of reference, it shapes which founders feel familiar, which pitches feel compelling, and which bets feel safe.
A study from the World Economic Forum highlights that a Harvard analysis found 70% of VC investors preferred pitches from male entrepreneurs—even when the pitches were identical. Separate research shows that investors tended to ask men questions about potential, while asking women questions about risk. Same business. Same metrics. Completely different framing.
There’s also a structural sector issue. Women-founded companies are disproportionately concentrated in areas like health, consumer, and beauty tech—sectors that, despite strong consumer demand, tend to command lower valuations than AI, cybersecurity, or enterprise software, where male founders dominate. According to Founders Forum research, the median Series A for a cybersecurity company (9.7% female founders) was $18.5 million. For beauty tech (52.3% female founders), it was $8.7 million. The sectors where women are represented most are the same sectors that attract the smallest checks.
The Irony: Female-Founded Companies Often Outperform
Here’s the part that makes the funding gap not just inequitable, but genuinely irrational from a pure investment standpoint.
Boston Consulting Group research found that female-founded companies generate 78 cents of revenue per dollar invested, compared to just 31 cents for male-founded startups. First Round Capital’s analysis of their own portfolio found that female-founded companies outperformed their male-founded counterparts by 63%. And PitchBook’s 2024 data shows that female founders exit faster—an average of six months ahead of male founders—and reached a record 24.3% of total US VC exit count in 2024.
Research also indicates that female-founded companies tend to run leaner, with a lower median monthly burn rate than the US average. In an investment climate that increasingly prizes capital efficiency, these are precisely the qualities that should be attracting more attention.
And yet the gap persists. Founders Forum estimates the missed economic opportunity at over $5 trillion globally. At the current rate of improvement, gender parity in VC allocation would not be reached until approximately 2065.
What’s Actually Changing—and What Needs To
There are genuine signs of movement. In 2024, a record 13 female-founded startups achieved unicorn status, bringing the collective post-money valuation of female-led unicorns to over $300 billion. In Europe, female founders in deep tech are now raising more per round than their male counterparts in the same sector—a first. Female founders represent an increasing share of deep tech founding teams globally, partly because academic pathways into those fields have been more equitable than industry pipelines.
But progress at the top doesn’t fix the pipeline. Early-stage financing for female founders in the US dropped sharply: only 20.5% of first financings in 2024 went to women-led startups, down from 26.5% in 2020. That’s the number that matters most. If women aren’t getting in the door at the seed stage, the rest of the funnel can’t improve.
The solutions being discussed by investors and ecosystem leaders tend to cluster around three levers: more female decision-makers at VC firms, stronger networks that connect female founders with investor access earlier, and more rigorous tracking of gender metrics so the problem stays visible and accountable. France’s public co-investment quota system, which requires 30% female founder investment from VC funds seeking public matching, resulted in a 35% increase in female founder funding. Evidence-based policy, it turns out, works.
Why This Matters for Our Industry
Architecture and interior design are industries where women make up a significant share of practitioners but a much smaller share of firm owners and leaders. The same patterns that show up in venture capital—different standards applied to similar pitches, undervaluation of work in “female-coded” sectors, structural barriers to growth capital—play out in our field too.
The data isn’t discouraging. It’s clarifying. Female-founded companies are delivering strong returns on less capital, reaching exits faster, and doing it all with lower burn. The gap between investment made and value returned isn’t a reflection of founder quality. It’s a reflection of a system that hasn’t fully caught up with the evidence.
That system is changing. Slowly, and not fast enough—but it’s changing. And the more clearly we can see the gap, the better positioned we are to close it.
