IWD 2025: Gender disparity in business & investing is a fight everyone should join

This year's International Women's Day falls under a long shadow that illustrates quite how much more work there is to be done to achieve true equity and inclusion for women in business.

"Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work," wrote President Trump's new public diplomacy hire, Darren Beattie, in October. The US administration's current 'War on DEI' has made a divisive issue even more so, just when we need to focus on hearing different perspectives and finding common ground – for everyone's sake.

Women have been fighting for decades to cement and advance our position in the workforce, and we're not going to stop now. But this isn't just a woman's fight. Homogeneity in all corners of society creates groupthink, producing an echo chamber that reinforces existing biases, which in turn stagnate innovation and creativity. For women in the workplace and in the world of startups, this isn't just an issue about basic fairness – it's about what makes the most business sense.

In 2023, a study of the Fortune 1000 list of the most successful companies found that while only 8% were led by women, those companies significantly outperformed their male-led counterparts in terms of revenue. Many of the world's most successful brands recognise that exclusionary culture is bad for business. Today, in the midst of significant pressure to roll back their DEI strategies, companies including Coca-Cola argue that doing so will certainly impact business growth and performance. 

DEI isn't simply about promoting diversity and recognising that people from different groups and backgrounds need different things to thrive in the workplace. It's also about making sure that everyone has access to the same opportunities and creating a truly inclusive environment to enable that to happen. While there's certainly room for groups with common issues and goals to meet and support each other, women-only events, taskforces and committees can't solve a problem that's everyone's responsibility: including men. I've noticed that women and nonbinary people often outnumber men at DEI-focused events. We need them to join these discussions.

In the UK, according to the British Business Bank, for every £1 of VC investment, all-female founder teams get less than 1p. All-male founder teams get 89p, and mixed gender teams get the remaining 10p. Is it any wonder, when only 13% of senior people on UK VC investment teams are women, and 48% of investment teams have no women at all?

The investment gap is not moving in the right direction, and – echoing Beattie's suggestion that women simply aren't cut out for leadership – some commentators have suggested that the blame should fall at female founders' feet for a perceived lack of ambition in negotiations with investors. In my experience as a female founder, that's nonsense. 

There's no end to women's ambition, ability or anything else that makes us highly competent and successful leaders. But the playing field is still riddled with inequality and bias. My hope is that the global business community will continue to recognise the real benefits of supporting gender parity, and keep pushing back on the current weaponisation of DEI.