IWD 2025: Why Are Food Tech’s Women Leaders Still Ignored by VC Investors?

As we celebrate International Women’s Day, one big question lingers for food tech: why do female leaders continue to get sidelined by investors?

As we reflect on the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women across the world on International Women’s Day, we’re left with some uncomfortable truths that hinder female leaders in the business world.

There are many incredible female-founded and -led startups in the food and climate tech ecosystem, but the path to success for these companies is – unfortunately and alarmingly – much harder than for those led by men.

“The reality is that women have always struggled to raise capital. This isn’t new,” Heather K Terry, founder and CEO of healthy snack brand GoodSam Foods, told Green Queen this week.

“Investors still have unconscious biases and often don’t understand how female-driven companies operate or that they consistently outperform in terms of financial management, sustainability, and realistic growth projections.”

These five stats show how women continue to be undervalued by investors, and why this needs to change as soon as possible.

Note: There is a dearth of data on this topic, yet another clue as to how underrepresented this issue is. Most of the below stats are from PitchBook, one of the few sources with any information at all.

Women are underrepresented at VC level

PitchBook data shows that in 2024, only 17-20% of VC decision-makers in the US were women. Moreover, in nearly 90% of VC firms with more than $50M in assets, the majority of decision-makers were male. Things are slightly better at smaller firms, nearly 30% of which have a majority of women calling the shots.

In Europe, 12-15% of VC decision-makers were women last year, while only 8-14% of VC firms had more female leaders than male. This is a big problem – for women-led startups to gain access to more capital, there needs to be a much larger share of female investors.

“Increasing the representation of women in check-writing roles can create more opportunities for female founders, as female check writers can identify and support teams and ideas that may otherwise be overlooked,” explained PitchBook.

“It takes many years to reach the top rungs of the firm ladder, and the path to a decision-maker role often involves detours through positions as operators or even founders,” it added.

“For this reason, female representation among GPs will likely take many years to reflect material changes and will trail progress in VC deal flow.”

A lack of funding for women-founded startups is nothing new

As Terry explained, this issue is not new at all. According to PitchBook’s US female founders dashboard, startups founded solely by women only receive around 2% of all venture capital – and this has been a constant trend since 2008 (when the share was 1.7%). And while we’re only in the first quarter of 2025, so far, female-founded startups make up only 1% of VC dollars this year.

In contrast, firms with both male and female co-founders perform much better, rising from a 7% share in 2008 to 21% in 2024. But this represented a decline from the 24% funding share these startups enjoyed in 2023.

Further punctuating the problems of underrepresentation of both venture capitalists and founders, a Harvard Business Review study from 2023 exposed how women-owned companies whose first round of funding came exclusively from female VCs were only half as likely to raise a second round than those whose first round included a male partner.

“No matter the size of the initial funding round, the industry, the geographic location, or the prestige of the investor, female founders were consistently less likely to close a second round if their first round only included women,” the 2,000-startup study suggested.

It’s not just the US

Looking at PitchBook’s female founder dashboard for Europe, it’s clear that this is a global issue. While exclusively women-founded startups performed marginally better here than their American counterparts in 2008 – with a still-dismal 2.9% funding share – the US is now slightly better-performing.

In 2024, European female-owned startups received just 1.5% of VC funding, and so far this year, things are even more dire at 0.5%. Companies with mixed-gender owners, meanwhile, gained 18% of investment dollars in 2024, a share that has risen to 21% thus far in 2025.

Women-led firms aren’t just getting less money – they’re also getting fewer deals compared to male-founded companies. In 2024, startups founded exclusively by women have received 6.5% and 5% of all VC deals in the US and Europe, respectively, a number that has remained relatively steady for years.

Here aswell companies with both male and female founders perform better. In the US, they account for 19% of the deals, and in Europe, this rises to 20% (when rounded up).

In Asia, too, DealStreetAsia found that startups with at least one female founder made up 18% of the total private capital secured in 2023, chiming with their counterparts in the west.

Climate and food tech trends are disappointing too

These investment trends extend to the climate and food tech sectors too. Analysis of Pitchbook data by Trellis showed that women-founded firms received just 0.4% ($136M) of the $33.5B invested in US climate tech startups in the first nine months of 2024, compared to $2.45B secured by mixed-gender-led startups.

Similarly, in 2023, agtech startups founded only by women made up 0.7% of VC investments in the sector globally, versus 16.5% for firms with both female and male founders, according to a separate report by PitchBook.

Women-led startups perform better – so why the disparity?

In the business world, it’s quite well-known that startups founded by women give investors better and faster returns. A 2018 study from the Boston Consulting Group revealed that women-founded startups generate 78 cents in revenue per invested dollar, more than twice as high as the 31 cents offered by male-founded businesses.

Female-founded firms also reach unicorn status faster, according to PitchBook. Its latest report, released this week, suggests that these companies take 4.2 years to cross the $1B valuation in the US, versus the national average of 4.5 years.

Likewise, women-founded startups also secure an exit faster (7.4 years versus 7.6 overall) – this has been the case for over a decade, although the gap in time has never been as small. This rings true in Europe too, where female-led companies have consistently outperformed the regional average time from founding to exit (7.9 years versus 8.5% for all startups).

That being said, the share of female-founded companies that secured an exit grew in both the US and Europe last year, it’s still low at 24% and 22%, respectively.

“The data is there. We know that women-led companies make more money, are better managed, and are more realistic in their growth projections. So the question isn’t: ‘Why should investors fund women-led companies?’ It’s: ‘Why aren’t they doing it when the numbers are so clear?'” Terry told Green Queen.

“At the end of the day, it’s easier to default to the existing systems. Hiring operators and middlemen who already fit into current structures is easier. It’s easier for investors to back founders who reflect the status quo than those who are building something different.

“But building something new – something more equitable, something more sustainable – requires a different mindset and approach. It’s a challenge worth taking on.”