In recent years, Venture Capitalist (VC) funding has become an increasingly viable option for entrepreneurs. In 2017 alone, UK startups received £5.6 billion in VC investment, according to the British Business Bank.
If you look a little deeper into the data behind those investments, however, you begin to see a worrying lack of gender diversity:
In their study of VC funding in 2017, the British Business Bank, Diversity VC and BVCA found that 89% of the investment was granted to all-male founding teams. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the VCs have a conscious bias towards men, but something is leading to a shocking lack of diversity.
The clues may lie in the unconscious bias of the people making the decisions. According to the research, almost half of the VC investment teams have no women at all, and of the ones that do, only 13% of women are in senior positions.
However, the research also found that only 4% of founding teams seen by VCs in 2017 were all-female, suggesting that women may be seriously under-represented when it comes to starting a business.
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