Every year, we see record news for female-founded startups that sounds like this: “Women-led companies raise more than ever before.” On the surface, that makes us think about progress and diversity, but does it reflect reality?

When you look past the headline number, the picture is very different. Women’s share of the funding market has actually gone down, even as the total amount raised has increased.

In the UK, for example, all-female founder teams received just 2% of total equity investment in 2024, down from 2.5% the year before. At first sight, it might seem that the reason is that the whole market went down, but all-male teams took home more than 80% of the money invested.

To avoid confusion, in this article, we break down the five things you need to check before believing misleading news on women’s inclusion.

Absolute Funding vs. Market Share

Absolute amount is the total pounds (or other currencies) that flowed to women-founded businesses in a given year. Market share, in turn, is the percentage of total investment that it represents.

The difference is that a higher amount of funding does not necessarily mean women-founded businesses are getting a larger share of the investment market. The whole market can grow much faster than the women’s part.

In other words, if the whole pie gets bigger, women-led businesses can raise more money than ever before, while still taking home a smaller slice of that pie in cash terms. 

That’s why you should always look at both numbers. A record year in absolute figures can mean very little if the share of the market that female-founded businesses raised has fallen.

Deal Count vs. Average Deal Size

A similar idea lies in the difference between the number of deals and the average deal size. UK data shows female-founded teams do relatively well on deal count, making up around 7–9% of equity deals over the past decade, but their statistics are far worse on deal value.

All-female teams have historically raised deals averaging around £1.4 million, compared with roughly £4.6 million for all-male teams. That said, male-led rounds have tended to run about three to four times larger. So a woman-founded startup is nearly as likely as a man-founded one to get a deal done, but that deal is likely to be much smaller.

Imagine a market where women founders close 90 deals worth £1 million each, and men founders close 90 deals worth £4 million each. The number of deals looks equal, and “women are getting funded just as often as men,” but the actual money is four times larger for one group. That’s why, by reporting only on deal count, we can miss the entire story.

All-Female vs. Mixed-Gender Founder Teams

Finally, there is a big difference between all-female teams and mixed-gender ones. This is one of the most commonly blurred lines in funding coverage, so let’s discuss it in detail.

• All-female teams: every founder on the cap table is a woman.

• Mixed-gender teams: at least one founder is a woman, alongside at least one man.

These two categories perform very differently, and lumping them together makes the picture for all-female founders inflated.

In the UK, mixed-gender teams have secured somewhere in the region of 16% of total equity investment, while all-female teams have remained stuck at around 5% (£1.4 billion of the £27.8 billion).

Still, some investors and funds, known as “Investing in Women Code” signatories, do slightly better. All-female teams received 6% of investment value from these signatories in 2025, three times the wider market average.

So as we see, some corners of the market are moving faster than others. That’s why when a headline says “women-led businesses raised £X billion,” always ask whether that figure includes mixed-gender teams.

How Outlier Rounds Can Distort Female Founder Funding Data

Finally, the statistic that trips up more readers than any other is the outsized effect of a small number of large deals on aggregate numbers.

There are so few all-female-founded companies raising very large rounds that, when one or two of them do close a big deal, it can swing the entire annual total for the category.

For instance, a single £200 million round can make the yearly numbers for “women-led funding” look dramatically better. But the day-to-day reality for the vast majority of female founders, who are raising much smaller amounts or struggling to raise at all, is different and not included.

This is a classic statistics problem, as averages and totals include outliers, but medians are not. If a report leads with a total or an average, and doesn’t mention how concentrated that total is, treat that number with caution.

A more transparent picture usually asks how many companies actually received funding, and what the typical (median) deal looked like, not just the biggest one.

What the Female Founder Funding Data Actually Shows

None of this means progress is not happening. Some segments of the market, like Investing in Women Code signatories, are helping to close the gap faster than the market as a whole.

But the overall UK figures make clear that the share of equity investment going to all-female founder teams has moved in a narrow corridor of 2-6% for over a decade, regardless of how large or small the total market has been in any given year.

That is to say, before taking any news at face value, try taking it through the prism of the parameters that we discussed above. And then it may seem that things are not going as well as they are supposed to be.