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Funding for Women Entrepreneurs

October 31, 2019 by OSYB Staff

Intuit QuickBooks shares that ” One 2019 survey shows that women business owners are 43% more likely than men to be concerned about limited access to money or funding.” Funding obstacles are every business owner’s headache and women in business have an even harder time. Here are 3 possible reasons why:

  1. Data shows that venture capital dollars given to women have slightly increased from 1.6% to 2.2%. Funders’ responses have been that there aren’t enough women businesses asking for funding, yet, “recent research shows that women (particularly black women) are the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs, so lack of women-led businesses to fund can hardly be the case.” Only 9% of women are decision makers in venture firms and this small representation could be part of the clogging of funding for women.
  2. Could bias be a part of the equation? ” A Caltech study discovered that male-led startups are almost twice as likely to get funding from male investors than female-led businesses.”
  3. Women entrepreneurs also need to overcome their “self-doubt”. Some experts say that more women experience “confidence gap, a term coined to explain the disparity between the confidence levels of men and women. Evidence shows that women are far more likely to underestimate their own abilities and qualifications.”

The obstacles are great and always have been but fortunately there is a greater awareness of the disparities in funding between the sexes. However, money is trickling in the better direction towards more parity and hopefully will continue to stay the course.

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For full article: Female entrepreneurs struggle to find business funding—here’s why
Image credit: Deposit Photos