Women make up around half of the world’s population. There is no field of endeavour in which women are not achieving, from tech to fashion to AI. And yet, the world of finance still does not back women entrepreneurs or support female-led businesses. Recent data from the global financing experts at PitchBook showed that, in 2023, just 2.1% of global venture capital went to women. That was not an unusual year.
Since 2008, European businesses led by men and women receive 10x more funding than businesses led solely by women. This is despite the case that Boston Consulting Group found women deliver more than 10% more cumulative revenue over five years.
Is it because women do not have any business ideas? Clearly not. Is it because finance has an outdated view of women – from the days when women needed their husbands or fathers to sign on their behalf? Sadly, it would seem so.
As Boston Consulting’s data shows, women are founding and very successfully running companies. This is very far from new. Today, there are major women’s names in the world of commerce — from Oprah Winfrey to Arianna Huffington, from Anne Boden (Starling Bank) to Melanie Perkins (Canva). Many millions of women internationally create and lead very successful and profitable businesses. Yet, finance is a significant problem.
Not only that, as my colleague Professor Pinar Ozcan points out, women founders make more impact than men. They lead more mission-driven businesses: businesses aimed at making a real difference in the world.
This is very much where we come in. As a business school in a global university such as Oxford, we want to address the big challenges of the world and want to give women, from wherever they come from in the world, the opportunity to make a difference.
The Unlock Her Future prize
This is why we are supporting The Unlock Her Future 2025 prize from the Bicester Collection, owned by Value Retail. It is all about finding ideas which come from women founders that really can make the difference to society – and so fits very well with our mission in the world of business schools.
By focusing on female founders and being the educational partner for the prize, we can really make a difference to the issues that matter to women across the world. We have been working with the finalists, who are competing for the $100,000 prize pot. It will be the catalyst to help them on their journey.
In the last few weeks, we have listened to pitches of everything from a legal app to help the judiciary and the courts in Pakistan understand more about domestic violence to a health tech start up that is taking telemedicine to millions of women in South Asia. These are the type of innovations that really make a difference.
Six women emerged as prize winners with a range of mission-driven businesses. We are very much looking forward to working with them in future.
It is often said you cannot teach entrepreneurship. But you can teach how to prepare a business plan and teach a mindset. Entrepreneurship is a very real part of our MBA programme and many of our students and alumni start their own businesses.
Our faculty research this area and we have an entrepreneurship centre, which is used to working with people all across the world. We can teach the basics – and give the women the toolkit and mentoring. The prize winners will be able to take courses that we run online – which will help them to the next stage. Then, next year in the summer, we are looking forward to hosting them in Oxford for more entrepreneurship planning.
It is extremely difficult to choose between the ideas. Everyone could go on to have an impact and make a successful enterprise, with the right mentoring, with the right funding and with the luck that goes with an entrepreneurial business.
I feel confident that, whatever they do next, these women will be taking these ideas as far as they can go. And I hope, one day that one of them is a globally renowned business and we will be backing them all the way. It is not too late for the finance industry to realise the opportunities it is missing.
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