About the importance of women entrepreneurship

March 8th is a day to recognize the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women around the world. From the view of a startup investor and founder, this is also a day to highlight the ongoing challenges that women continue to face in the world of entrepreneurship. Women continue to be underrepresented and face unique obstacles in starting and scaling their businesses.

#1 Access to capital, where? Many reports, like this recent one from Atomico’s State of European Tech , show women receive quite less money for their companies. Actually, in Europe, 87% of all VC funding is still raised by men-only founding teams, while the proportion of funding raised by women-only teams has dropped from 3% to 1% since 2018. Even when women-only teams successfully raise a round, they are likely to receive less.

#2 Be aware of unconscious biases. I think there is no secret that women are often underestimated compared to men when we are talking about managing a company. More than once I have heard a woman CEO or manager explaining that, when meeting a VC, she was asked if she would be able to scale her business and take care of her family at the same time. How many times, as a man, have you been asked that? The common unconscious biases for them are to be less competent or less committed to their businesses.

#3 But what about the family? That question about taking care of the children is a question that also women make to themselves. And this happens because, despite the presence of women in the working market, the presence of men taking care of the tasks at home or dependant people is close to nothing. We still take for granted that they will take care of that responsibilities, and that is something all of us must change.

Despite these challenges, women entrepreneurs are making significant contributions to the entrepreneurial ecosystem and, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, the number of women entrepreneurs is on the rise.?

The number of women in tech roles is also increasing. Research from TalentUp reveals that certain areas are more balanced than others. Product managers have the highest proportion of women at 40%, engineers (37%) and data scientists (31%). While nowhere near gender parity, this highlights that there's plenty of female technical talent in the funnel.?

I would like to raise a question today: what do you do to tackle this situation? Let's share ideas among the entrepreneurial community to achieve more changes and don’t get stuck - we can’t afford that.