This research report describes the current state of gender equality in the U.S. venture capital (VC) industry and offers a practical way forward to close its significant gender gaps. It is intended to be an accessible resource for practitioners in the venture ecosystem, as well as a helpful reference document for journalists, scholars, and others interested in understanding gender dynamics in venture capital.
Resource Category: Women
Female Founding Gaps in Agri-FoodTech
Agri-FoodTech is an emerging category within the food startup universe with enormous potential to impact critical issues from climate change to food insecurity. More and more venture capital is being invested in the sector, but it’s not reaching one of the leading groups of entrepreneurs—female founders.
Building Women’s Wealth Through Business Ownership
This report explores ways business ownership can serve as a wealth-building tool for women, explains the systemic barriers impeding women’s ability to build wealth through business ownership, and suggests ways grant makers, policy advocates, and practitioners can intentionally promote wealth-building by entrepreneurial women through business ownership.
Women-Owned Employer Businesses
In March 2019, the Office of Advocacy published a fact sheet titled “Small Business Facts: Spotlight on Women-Owned Employer Businesses”, written by Nora Esposito, Economic Research Fellow. This fact sheet highlights contributions made by 1.1 million women-owned employer businesses to the U.S. economy, as well as areas for future growth. The fact sheet also provides information on industrial and geographic diversity of women-owned employer businesses. Read the fact sheet to learn more.
Closing The Wealth Gap for Millennial Women
Today, there are about 40 million millennial women, representing 31.5% of the female population in the U.S. Millennial women do not benefit from many economic policies and systems designed by, and built to meet the needs of, men as primary breadwinners. Millennial women came of age during the Great Recession, the rise of mass incarceration, unprecedented student debt levels, and changing workforce dynamics. All of these factors contribute to the fact that millennial women are 37% more likely than Generation Xers (those born between 1965 and 1984) to be living below the federal poverty line and are more likely to be underemployed or unemployed than previous generations.
Microfinance in The United States
Nonprofit research organization MDRC and Grameen America, Inc., the fastest growing nonprofit microfinance organization in the United States, today released the early results of a research study, Microfinance in the United States: Early Impacts of the Grameen America Program. The study, funded by Robin Hood, is the most rigorous, independent, third-party evaluation of group microfinance in the United States, assessing Grameen America’s program, a microfinance model that provides small loans to low-income women entrepreneurs in the United States seeking to launch or expand small businesses.
Build Her Up
We at Thumbtack, along with our partner for this report, Square, take pride in our shared mission to make it easier than ever for aspiring entrepreneurs to take the leap and start their own business. And in celebration of International Women’s Day on March 8 and Women’s History Month, we fielded an extensive survey of female small business owners to better understand their experiences of working for themselves.
Women in The CDFI Industry
FUND Community Institute continues to engage in dialogue and analysis around data from its landmark study, Perception versus Reality: Women and Change in the CDFI Industry (available at www.fundci.org). This month, we examined the prevalence of women as leaders of CDFIs, and how this role may have changed since the founding of the industry. The findings suggest that women are playing leadership roles in large numbers (although not at all sizes and types of CDFIs) and that the organizations they head up may be leading the way in fostering more inclusive, family-friendly work environments.
Millennial Women Entrepreneurs
Millennial women, those born between 1982 and 2000, represent the future of entrepreneurship in America. According to the 2015 Census Bureau data, there are 83.1 million millennials in the United States. By the year 2025, millennials will comprise 75 percent of the American workforce, and many will become entrepreneurs.
Financial Security of Single Women
The gender wealth gap continues growing even though single women have benefited from regulatory protections to reduce wealth stripping and have had increased access to institutions, products, and services that help them build wealth. This growing gap not only impacts their financial security in retirement but also their ability to pass resources on to future generations.
To shepherd our collective efforts and move the needle to improve the economic well-being of single low-income women, we must understand how asset inequality is compounded by structural barriers to wealth building for women, including accessing income, tax benefits, social services programs, and financial products and services.