Supporting women entrepreneurs: why it takes an ecosystem 

By Andreea Iacoban

Women’s entrepreneurship has been on the policy agenda for years. A lot of evidence has been gathered on key challenges and new funding commitments have been announced. Yet if we think the gap has been solved, we are mistaken. Recent figures from the 2025 House of Commons report on Female entrepreneurship ¹ illustrate the scale of the challenge that still remains. In the UK: 

• 75% of university spinouts are all-male teams 

• 86% of angel investors and 85% of senior investors in venture capital are male 

•  in 2023 alone, all-male founder teams raised £6.5 billion, more than three times the amount raised by all-female founder teams over the past decade (£2 billion) 

These statistics describe different parts of the same ecosystem: who is encouraged to commercialise an idea, who receives support, who makes investment decisions and, ultimately, which ventures succeed on the market. 

Supporting women entrepreneurs – What we stand to gain 

I believe there is still value in setting out this opportunity clearly. Much of the discussion around women entrepreneurs focuses, understandably, on the barriers they face. Equally important, however, is the opportunity we stand to unlock by creating a more inclusive innovation ecosystem. The benefits go beyond entrepreneurship itself, shaping economic growth, investment performance, research, policy, as well as the products and services in our daily lives. Here are a few examples: 

• Unlocking £250 billion in the UK alone² by closing the representation gap Evidence from the UK suggests that achieving parity in entrepreneurship could add around £250 billion in gross value added (GVA) to the economy.  

• Generating returns of up to $5 trillion globally by closing the funding gap. Evidence suggests that female-founded startups generate more than twice the revenue per dollar invested (78¢ vs 31¢), indicating that investors may be overlooking high-return opportunities.³ 

• Creating ‘innovation’ that levels the field rather than propagates existing inequities; this goes beyond entrepreneurship, in everyday life aspects such as health and mobility.  Well-known examples include building safer and more robust transportation systems by considering gendered behaviours⁴, and improving health outcomes by ensuring female models are included in drug design research and female patients are included proportionally in the clinical trials pool.⁵ 

• Strengthening venture performance through genuine inclusion; while it’s difficult to put a number on this, a recent LSE study⁶ showed that women’s participation can elevate venture performance. The researchers also found that representation alone is not enough –  the study argues that women’s presence contributes most meaningfully where there is “genuine inclusion”, including leadership practices that actively seek out and value minority voices. 

The question, then, is how can we, as an ecosystem, work together to foster what the researchers call ‘genuine inclusion’, i.e. ensuring that women aren’t just given a seat at the table but that their perspectives influence decisions made and innovation priorities. 

What can we do about it – I believe each part of the ecosystem has a part to play 

Through our work at Oxentia, I have had the privilege of hearing perspectives from across the innovation ecosystem.  

1. Venture Capital firms could bring together mixed investment panels to ensure a well-rounded view of what new technologies can do for all possible customer segments. Femtech is a clear example of an underexplored opportunity. Investors who do not fully understand women’s behaviours and needs as customers may overlook high-return businesses. Research also shows that investors often ask women founders questions about risk and prevention, while men founders are more often asked questions about growth and opportunity. As Kanze et al. eloquently put it ‘ We ask the men [founders] to win and women not to lose’. ⁷ 

The representation gap remains significant. Around 26% of European VC teams have no women members⁸; the figure rises to 47% in Romania⁹. In the UK, 19% of VC teams have no women, rising to 46% among firms with less than £100 million in assets under management¹⁰.  

2. Research & Innovation funders – when funding innovation and research capacity building programmes, funders could specifically include sessions on how to support women to become entrepreneurs and why this can benefit the local ecosystem economically and socially. These conversations should not be restricted to women participants, and instead involve the investors, university leaders, technology-transfer professionals and policymakers whose decisions shape entrepreneurial pathways. The aim should be to convene the people and organisations who can sustain the long-term impact your programmes pursue – experienced and mission-driven enablers, institutional leaders eager to make a change, regional women’s networks and grassroots communities. 

3. Technology transfer offices – when opening a call for funding and support, information dissemination should run through a range of channels so it can reach those who aren’t already surrounded by entrepreneurship news; TTOs should invite women mentors and panellists to their innovation events and also help women staff and academics see entrepreneurship as an exciting and viable career option. This means giving them access to relevant mentors and visibility of role models. 

4. Researchers – whether or not the entrepreneurship hat is for them, researchers can help us find new solutions to close the gap and understand what causes it! Fundamental gaps still exist in areas such as drug development testing on female models and urban policies that fail to consider gendered behaviour. Social scientists and other researchers working on this issue could help answer some pressing questions. Better evidence would help funders, policy makers and programme designers move beyond well-intentioned activity towards interventions that produce sustained change.  

Several questions remain open: i) What do we know about business mentoring for women? Does it have an impact on career trajectory/ start-up performance? Is it better for women founders to be mentored by men or women or does it even matter? ii) In your view, which indicators point to (genuine) high women entrepreneurship in an ecosystem? The % of women founders in high-growth ventures? The % of VC funds invested in women-led businesses? The number of women inventors?

5. Accelerators and ecosystem enablers – luckily, guidance on making entrepreneurship inclusive is available, including practical resources from the Better Incubation initiative ¹¹ and GIZ¹² suggesting that better representation among programme design teams, mentors and investment committees can improve outcomes for women participants. This guidance also points to concrete design choices that matter, such as programme timing, location and format which can determine whether women can participate at all, particularly where caring responsibilities or safety concerns limit their availability.  

Crucially, this should not become a deficit model in which women are told to become more confident, more ambitious or more investment-ready while the system around them remains unchanged. The strongest programmes build founders’ practical capabilities while also engaging the institutions, funders and investors that influence their progress (see funder’s paragraph). 

There is no single intervention that will close the gender entrepreneurship gap. Funders, universities, TTOs, accelerators, investors, researchers and entrepreneur networks each influence whether their innovation ecosystem succeeds or fails to support women entrepreneurs and, subsequently, makes or misses socio-economic impact. 

We can, however, learn from ecosystems who are already working to close the gender gap across the innovation landscape. A strong example of this is Thailand, where female researchers outnumber male counterparts in publicly funded research institutions. 53% of researchers in Thailand are female, and this is a direct result of policy intervention. The Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation (MHESI) has invested heavily in developing female research talent, through initiatives such as the “women leaders in science incubation programme”, grants directed to female researchers, and building ASEAN-wide networks of knowledge exchange for female researchers¹³. Having a majority of female researchers has overcome the “leaky pipeline” issue faced by many Western ecosystems, including the UK, where female researcher proportions decrease drastically with increasing seniority, and thus rarely translate to commercialisation leadership. Combining this with a culture of female entrepreneurship, with over 45% of Thai businesses having a female founder¹⁴, creates the ideal landscape for female researchers bridging the gap between academia and business, bringing their research to the market.  

At Oxentia, we work at the intersection of research, innovation and entrepreneurship, helping funders, universities and ecosystem builders translate good intentions into practical action. We are excited about the potential of diverse entrepreneurship to drive long-term positive impact, not only by fuelling more innovative businesses and technologies, but also by creating an environment where more people can contribute to solving the challenges that matter most. Our experience has shown that meaningful change comes from understanding the needs of different ecosystem actors, identifying the barriers they face, and designing support mechanisms that work for them. Increasingly, we also see our role as bringing these stakeholders together and helping them move beyond individual initiatives towards system-level change.  

References

1. Financial Times (n.d.) Why women are still underrepresented in drug research and clinical trials. Financial Times.
2. Forbes (2026) The $5 Trillion Missed Opportunity in Funding the Female Founder. Forbes.
3. Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) (2022) Accelerating Women Entrepreneurs: A Handbook. GIZ.
4. House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee (2025) Female Entrepreneurship. London: UK Parliament.
5. ITS International (n.d.) Invisible Barriers: How Urban Transport Fails Women and How We Can Solve It. ITS International.
6. Kanze, D., Huang, L., Conley, M.A. and Higgins, E.T. (2018) We Ask Men to Win and Women Not to Lose: Closing the Gender Gap in Startup Funding. Academy of Management Journal.
7. Level 20 (2024) European Gender Diversity Report 2024. Level 20.
8. Lordan, G. and Nobari, K.S. (2025) Finite-Sample Nonparametric Bounds with an Application to the Causal Effect of Workforce Gender Diversity on Firm Performance. London School of Economics.
9. Rose, A. (2019) The Alison Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship. HM Treasury.
10. ROPEA and Level 20 (2025) CEE Romania Diversity Report 2025. Romanian Private Equity Association (ROPEA).
11. The Nation Thailand (2025) Women Leaders in Science Incubation Programme and Thailand’s Research Ecosystem. The Nation Thailand.
12. UK Private Capital (2025) Diversity in UK Private Equity and Venture Capital Report 2025. UK Private Capital.
13. Better Incubation (n.d.) Better Incubation Resources for Inclusive Entrepreneurship Support. Better Incubation.
14. Cogent Business & Management (2026) Female Entrepreneurship in Thailand. Cogent Business & Management.