Venture capital plays an important role in helping new businesses get off the ground. The field also has a stubborn gender gap.
More than four in five partners at U.S.-based venture capital firms are men, surveys and research show. Perhaps relatedly, VC firms overwhelmingly direct their funds to man-led businesses: In 2023, only about one in four VC funds were allocated to woman-led companies, according to Crunchbase data.
Advocates for gender equity have long called for firms to have more female senior venture capitalists on their teams. The idea is that having more women making investment decisions will translate into more funding for woman-led businesses.
As a professor of entrepreneurship, I wondered whether the facts supported this idea. So my coauthors and I analyzed funding decisions from more than 150 midsize and large U.S.-based VC firms over eight years.
