STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Women across northwestern Europe received a tiny fraction of venture capital raised in 2023, with all-female founding teams receiving 0.6% in France, 1% in the Nordic countries, 1.9% in Britain, and 1.7% in Germany, according to a report by Unconventional Ventures.
Iceland was a little better than other countries in the region with 7.3% of capital allotted to all-female teams. In Sweden, all-male founding teams received 96% of the venture capital funding in 2023.
"The persistent and substantial funding gap is glaringly obvious... addressing and closing this gap will require uprooting the ingrained biases against diverse founders that permeate Europe's VC ecosystem," said Nora Bavey, co-founder of Unconventional Ventures.
All-women teams represented 6.1% of all funding rounds in the Nordics in 2022 and 2023, but received only 1.2% of the total capital, the report said.