A few of us recently attended Gresham House Ventures’ second annual Women in Venture Capital event and were reminded of some dispiriting statistics around the gender funding gap:
- only 2% of VC money in the UK goes to all-female founded companies. A statistic that has been fairly stagnant over the past few years.
- women are not only less likely to receive funding but when they do, they also tend to receive significantly less capital than men. In fact, a recent report from Startups suggest that solely male-owned companies raise on average 5.9x more than their female counterparts in early stage of VC funding.
In contrast with this saddening picture, research suggests that companies with women in leadership roles often exhibit advantages that can lead to greater success, particularly during times of important transformation. Here are some key findings from various studies:
- A 2018 Boston Consulting Group (BCG) study highlighted that female-led startups tend to generate more revenue per dollar of investment compared to male-led startups. On average, women-founded companies delivered 78 cents of revenue for every dollar invested, compared to 31 cents for men.
- Similarly, The Pipeline’s Women Count 2020 report suggested that London-listed companies where at least one-third of their executed committees are women largely outperform those with no women, with profit margins more than 10 times greater.
- Studies published in the Harvard Business Review found that women tend to score higher in key leadership qualities like taking initiative, resilience, and results orientation compared to their male counterparts.
Women in leadership roles are also often associated with higher employee satisfaction and engagement. Studies show that women leaders tend to have better interpersonal skills, contributing to more inclusive and supportive work environments, which can improve employee retention and overall company culture. These skills are particularly important to navigate complex transition periods.
Underrepresentation of Women in Technology
Looking at the performance on gender parity in our own industry, the picture does not appear much brighter. Although women represent half of the users of new technology, global data provided by LinkedIn shows that they remain significantly underrepresented in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) workforce. In 2023, women on LinkedIn made up almost half (49.3%) of total employment across non-STEM occupations, but just 29.2% of all STEM workers. Furthermore, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2023, fewer women are in senior leadership positions in STEM companies than in other industries, with just 12.4% women in C-level positions in STEM compared to 27.5% in non-STEM.
Slow progress towards parity
The Global Gender Gap Report is a great reminder of how much work is still to be done in the journey towards global gender parity. The results of the 2023 edition show the total progress made towards gender parity since the first report was issued in 2006 is a mere 4.1 percentage-point gain. Hence, if progress towards gender parity proceeds at the same average speed observed over the past 17 years, the overall global gender gap is projected to close in 131 years ie. in 2154.
40% women in Branchspace's workforce
Women constitute 40% of Branchspace’s workforce in 2024 and we are proud to promote diversity as part of one of our core values: Caring for People and World. Since inception, Branchspace has built an exceptionally talented and diverse team of eCommerce platform technologists, travel industry experts, software engineers and UX/UI designers selecting the best talent based on each person’s ability, qualifications, potential and a common passion for technology and travel. We strongly believe that diversity fosters creativity, each individual bringing fresh ideas, ways of thinking and approaches which make the way we work unique, more effective and impactful. Beyond promoting gender diversitt, we are also proud to have a great variety of ethnic groups within our teams, with over 15 different nationalities for 80 team members.
In 2021 Branchspace appointed Ursula Silling as CEO, a truly transformational leader and a visionary who has been leading the way to more parity in travel technology management over the past 30 years.
With around 30% women in the Triplake Engineering team, our aim is to keep promoting greater gender diversity across our teams and raising awareness of the benefits it can bring to the technology industry in general.
We hope that many companies will follow suit.
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