UK Female Founders Secure Only 2% of Equity Funding, finds New Report

• New Female Founders report by Charles Stanley and Beauhurst highlights persistent gender disparities in UK entrepreneurship.
• Women-led businesses continue to face significant funding gaps, limited networking opportunities, and bias.
• These challenges are restricting growth and advancement for female entrepreneurs.

A new report reveals persistent gender disparities in UK entrepreneurship, with women-led businesses facing limited funding and slower growth. Despite some progress, female-led businesses continue to struggle with significant funding gaps, restricted networking opportunities, and ongoing bias, all of which are hindering their potential for growth.

New Female Founders report by Charles Stanley and Beauhurst reveals ongoing gender disparities in UK entrepreneurship. Over 60% of women feel they must work harder than male counterparts to prove their worth as leaders, even in 2024.

Gender disparity affects all areas of business, particularly female-led startups. Less than two percent of equity funding currently goes to female-founded companies in the UK. 25% of women believe securing funding would be easier if they were men.

In the first three quarters of 2024, female-led firms raised a total of £1.48 billion across 972 deals. This sum is overshadowed by the £9.28 billion raised by businesses without female founders, which is over six times more. September update from the UK Government’s Investing in Women Code initiative highlights the scale of the ongoing problem in improving access to resources and finance for female-led businesses.

A report from the Department for Business and Trade shows that the share of deals going to women-founded firms was only 4% higher among Code signatories than the market average, and had actually decreased from the previous year. The lack of support for female founders is having significant negative effects on business growth.

Charles Stanley’s study found that, as of October 2024, only 13.7% of high-growth businesses in the UK had at least one female founder. Despite this, the number of women-led businesses has more than doubled over the past decade.

The technology sector has seen more activity for female-founded firms than other industries in recent years. The application software industry leads in the number of high-growth, women-led businesses, with 2,407 companies. Other growing sectors include software-as-a-service (855), data provision (691), and artificial intelligence (533).

Despite success, women still account for only a quarter of tech roles and just 5% of leadership positions. A McKinsey report found that only 81 women are promoted to manager for every 100 men, a decline from 87 the previous year.

Female-led fintechs outperformed male-led counterparts last year, achieving 30% more turnover growth. Despite this success, female-led fintechs still make up less than a fifth of all fintechs in the UK.

In Scotland, increasing female participation in entrepreneurship is seen as crucial to economic growth. The Scottish Government invested a record £2.6 million in 2024-25 to support women in entrepreneurship, with plans to increase it to at least £4 million in 2025-26. Initiatives like Ana Stewart’s Pathways Forward are backed to help remove barriers facing women in enterprise.