Britain Is Missing Out on £310 Billion—Because We Won’t Back Female Founders

The numbers are staggering. The solution is simple. So why aren’t we fixing this?

In 2023, all-male founder teams raised £6.5 billion in venture capital. Female-only teams? They raised £2 billion—over the past decade.

Read that again. A single year of funding for men exceeded ten years of funding for women by more than three times.

This isn’t just unfair. It’s economically catastrophic.

According to the Women and Equalities Committee’s latest report on female entrepreneurship, the UK economy is currently hemorrhaging £310 billion in potential growth—money we’re leaving on the table simply because we refuse to fund women at the same rate as men. That figure, adjusted for inflation, stems from the landmark Rose Review, which identified that equalizing investment in female entrepreneurs could unlock £250 billion in economic value.

As Stephen Welton CBE, Chair of the British Business Bank, put it: “There is a big opportunity here. The evidence and the data tell us we have a problem. What we are failing to sufficiently unlock is the opportunity of a huge amount of economic activity.”

The Funding Gap Is Getting Worse, Not Better

The trajectory is alarming. In 2024, just 2% of equity investment backed a female founder—down from 2.5% the previous year. Meanwhile, all-male teams continue to hoover up over 80% of available venture capital, despite the inconvenient truth that female-led businesses consistently outperform their male-led counterparts.

Women currently lead just 20% of UK businesses. The playing field isn’t level—it’s a cliff face.

For women from ethnically diverse backgrounds, the picture becomes almost incomprehensible. Between 2009 and 2019, only ten Black female entrepreneurs received venture capital funding in the UK. Ten. That represents 0.02% of total venture capital investment over a decade.

Even in sectors explicitly designed for women, the pattern holds. Femtech companies—technologies addressing women’s health and wellbeing—are less likely to receive funding when founded exclusively by women than when founded by men. As Debbie Wosskow OBE, co-chair of the Invest in Women Taskforce, bluntly stated: “The UK is a pretty terrible place to be a female entrepreneur.”

Why the Gap Exists

The Committee identified several interconnected barriers. Women disproportionately shoulder caregiving responsibilities, which constrains their time, income, and ability to scale businesses during critical growth phases. There’s a documented gap in “financial confidence” between men and women that begins in childhood—a reflection of inadequate financial and enterprise education in schools, particularly for girls.

But perhaps the most damaging factor is simply this: recommendations keep getting ignored. Banks and venture funds treat policy suggestions as optional. Without transparency requirements and meaningful enforcement mechanisms, nothing changes.

What We’re Really Losing

The Committee emphasized that this isn’t merely about missing out on £310 billion. We’re also losing the unique goods, services, and innovations that women—particularly women from diverse backgrounds—would create. Technologies designed by and for marginalized groups. Solutions to problems that male-dominated boardrooms don’t even recognize exist.

The potential is enormous. We just need the political will to unlock it.

The Path Forward

The solution isn’t mysterious. The government must work with UK Research and Innovation to develop dedicated entrepreneurial support programs for women in postgraduate and postdoctoral studies. We need campaigns showcasing female role models at every stage of the entrepreneurial journey. Most critically, we need mandatory financial and enterprise education embedded in the school curriculum, with specific focus on building girls’ financial confidence from an early age.

And we need enforcement. Real accountability. Transparent reporting on how much funding actually reaches female founders, with consequences for institutions that continue discriminatory practices.

Britain has a choice. We can continue watching hundreds of billions in economic growth slip away while talented women struggle for crumbs of investment. Or we can recognize that backing female entrepreneurs isn’t charity—it’s smart economics.

The evidence is clear. The data is damning. The opportunity is massive.

It’s time to stop leaving money—and potential—on the table.