Women Entrepreneurs: Yes, You Are Underserved

Gender diversity begets more gender diversity. In order for women-led and women-owned companies to receive greater funding, gender- diverse investors are required.

ICYMI: Harvard Business Review (HBR) kicked the gender-bias in venture capital hornet's nest in its recently published article "We Recorded VCs' Conversations And Analyzed How Differently They Talk About Female Entrepreneurs." Between 2009-2010, researchers were given access to125 government venture capital decision-making meetings in Sweden and observed a whole lot of gendered discourse.

Read the HBR article for the full "he said/she said" discussion. Here, let's focus on this: governments are venture capitalists and quite significant ones, too.

As the HBR article points out: between 2007-2013, government venture capitalists in the European Union allocated 3,621,000,000 Euros to finance innovation and growth in small and medium-size businesses. While the article focuses on the gendered-discourse the researchers silently observed in the 125 meetings, it slides this in, in the last paragraph:

"Because the purpose of government venture capital is to use tax money to stimulate grown and value creation for society as a whole, gender bias presents the risk that the money isn't being invested in businesses that have the highest potential. This isn't only damaging for women entrepreneurs; it's potentially damaging for society as a whole." Read more