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 The report, "Women Entrepreneurs 2014: Bridging the Gap in Venture
Capital," paints a picture of a start-up environment that is making
strides in some areas, such as backing female entrepreneurs, even as
the percentage of female venture capitalists slips.
About 15 percent of U.S. companies receiving venture-capital
investment, meaning cash injections from venture firms in a
business's early days, included at least one woman on the executive
team, according to the report. That compares with just 5 percent in
1999.
But just under 3 percent of companies receiving venture cash had
female chief executive officers, according to the report.
At venture-capital firms globally, about 6 percent of partners were
women, compared with 10 percent in 1999, the study showed. The
numbers jibe with a Reuters study last month that showed that
declining percentages of venture capitalists are women and that many
top firms have no female partners at all.
Many female entrepreneurs say that buttressing the numbers of women
venture capitalists is key to advancing the numbers of female
entrepreneurs.
The Babson report seemingly backs that up, with women venture
capitalists more than twice as likely as men to invest in start-ups
with a woman on the management team. Larger, more established
venture firms were also more likely to do so.
The report comes at a time when difficulties facing women in
technology have hit the headlines.
Examples include statistics showing low numbers of women at
companies such as Facebook Inc and Google Inc; a lawsuit by a female
founder of dating app Tinder alleging she was pushed aside; and
three suits brought by female employees at venture firms alleging
harassment or discrimination, or sometimes both.
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The report's authors recommend steps such as encouraging the
investors who allocate their money to venture-capital funds to put
pressure on venture firms to invest in more start-ups with women on
the executive teams. Investors in venture-capital funds are
typically endowments, pensions and the like.
Around the United States, women entrepreneurs are majority owners of
an estimated 10 million businesses, or 36 percent of all businesses,
the report says, citing data from the Small Business Administration.
The authors studied almost 7,000 U.S. companies that received
venture funding from 2011 to 2013. For the statistics on percentages
of female partners at venture-capital firms, they studied 2,234
firms in the United States and internationally.
(Reporting by Sarah McBride; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
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