All-female founding teams raise less than all-male teams in every sector

The standard explanation for why all-female founding teams raise less money is that women start businesses in sectors that need less capital. An analysis of 9,156 UK equity rounds filed at Companies House between 2023 and 2025 finds that sector accounts for only a tenth of the gap.

SyndicateRoom, the FCA-regulated EIS fund manager, used data from the company-intelligence platform Sonde to compare 1,088 rounds raised by all-female founding teams with 8,068 raised by all-male teams. At the median, all-female teams raised £255k and all-male teams £313k, a gap of £58k.

The first half of the sector explanation holds. 27% of all-female rounds were in consumer businesses, against 17% of all-male rounds, and all-male teams were 1.5 times as likely to be in deeptech. Consumer rounds are also smaller: the median consumer round was £274k, against £427k in deeptech.

The gap, however, survives inside every sector. At the median, all-female teams raised 11% less than all-male teams in deeptech, 18% less in consumer and 19% less in software.

When SyndicateRoom re-weighted the all-female rounds to match the sector mix of the all-male rounds, the all-female median rose by only £3k to £6k. On that measure, sector explains 6% to 10% of the gap. Measured on averages rather than medians, it explains 9% to 19%.

The shortfall is widest at the top end. On averages, all-female teams raised 30% to 48% less than all-male teams within each of the three main sectors. SyndicateRoom’s earlier analysis of the same filings found no all-female raise above £50m in the three years studied.

The analysis does not establish why the within-sector gap exists. Possible explanations include investor behaviour, women raising at earlier stages or in smaller tranches, differences in the amount founders ask for, and differences in business model too fine for sector tags to capture. SyndicateRoom plans to track the all-female cohort through successive funding stages next.

Tom Britton, partner at SyndicateRoom, said: “Sector has been the comfortable explanation for the funding gap, because it places the cause in founders’ choices. Our data says it accounts for about a tenth. An all-female deeptech team still raises less than an all-male deeptech team, so most of the gap needs another explanation, and investors, ourselves included, should start by looking at their own decisions.”

Sarah Turner, CEO of Angel Academe, added: “While it’s true that women are more likely to build in sectors that typically attract less investor capital such as consumer products, that doesn’t explain the funding gap. Even in deeptech and software, areas where we focus, women-led companies receive far less capital than their male counterparts. The conundrum remains.”

The full analysis is published at syndicateroom.com