Women and Equalities Committee call for the government to back female entrepreneurs at the Autumn Budget

The Women and Equalities Committee have published their report in response the enquiry exploring female entrepreneurship in the UK. The report identifies access to finance for female-founders as a critical issue given the ‘tiny fraction’ of venture capital investment going to supporting women-led businesses. In response to this, among other challenges, the Committee calls for the Autumn Statement to unlock the economic potential of female entrepreneurs along with an ambitious Female Entrepreneurship Strategy to sit alongside the Industrial Strategy and Small Business Plan.

The economic case for women entrepreneurs is made clear. The Rose Review identified that £250 billion in growth could be achieved if women entrepreneurs were funded to the same level as men. Adjusting for inflation, that figure is now a staggering £310 billion. Of note, the Committee concludes that voluntary initiatives have failed to date and therefore co-ordinated, government action is needed to unlock the full economic potential of female entrepreneurs for the UK economy.

techUK welcome the publication of this report and many of the recommendations align with the response that we submitted back in April. The report identifies systemic barriers to female entrepreneurship in the UK and provides recommendations that address their root causes.

Root causes identified for female entrepreneurship

The statistics are clear and epitomise the challenges facing female entrepreneurs:

The report identifies deep-seated problems in the venture capital ecosystem as one of the key root causes of this. As techUK consistently hear from our female founder members, investment decisions are dominated by male-led firms, with women holding just 15% of positions on investment committees.

However, female founders also often face biased questioning during investment rounds about childcare, discriminatory funding decisions, and sectors popular with women— such as femtech, beauty, and wellness — are often dismissed as ‘not being scalable’. Compounding the problem, regional disparities make it more difficult for entrepreneurs, with 80% of fund managers concentrated around London.

The report highlights particular challenges in the tech ecosystem, where average AI start-up deals for men reached £5.3 million versus just £800,000 for women, and only 7% of AI founders are female. In response to this, the Committee calls for female-focused accelerators in high-growth tech sectors and greater recognition of consumer technology innovation - areas where women excel but face systematic undervaluation. techUK support these recommendations as action to support networking (where often the case is being 'in the right room') and investment into high-growth areas – along with using the tools in the governments' arsenal to support women entrepreneurs.

Beyond finance and investment, there is recognition of the structural barriers, including inadequate maternity support for self-employed women, childcare costs that exceed start-up income, and lack of financial education in schools. To combat this, the Committee call for increased maternity allowance, making childcare tax-deductible, and nationwide mentorship programmes connecting female founders with experienced entrepreneurs.

Key recommendations for the UK government:

To address key barriers, the Women and Equalities Committee call for the following:

techUK, on behalf of our members, look forward to working with the Committee and our members to support female entrepreneurship in the tech sector. In Summer, we partnered with the Invest in Women Taskforce to host a roundtable exploring this very topic (see here). We were pleased to see many discussion points echoed throughout the report - and recommendations tackling these.

Our continued activity to support women in the tech ecosystem includes a roundtable with the Invest in Women Taskforce on 5 November (see more here) and the launch of techUK’s Women Forum. This forum will be a network dedicated to supporting women at every stage of their tech careers - helping them to start, stay and thrive in the tech sector (see more here).

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