Author
Maija Renko
Aalto University, Finland
Biography
Maija Renko is a professor of entrepreneurship at Aalto University School of Business in Finland. Her research and teaching interests are focused on the early stages of the entrepreneurial process, social entrepreneurship, and technology entrepreneurship. Her research has been published in leading management and entrepreneurship journals, such as the Journal of Management, Journal of Business Venturing, and Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice. Maija received her DSc degree from Turku School of Economics and a PhD in business administration from Florida International University. Between 2007 and 2019, she worked at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she was promoted to full professor in 2019. From 2019 to 2024, she served as professor and Coleman Chair of Entrepreneurship in the Driehaus College of Business at DePaul University.
Women’s entrepreneurship is celebrated as a powerful engine of economic growth and inclusion. Yet, despite decades of progress, women founders are still held back in the very domains shaping the future. According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor GEM 2024/2025 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report, women are about 20% less likely to start a business than men, with their entrepreneurial activity lagging behind men’s in nearly every region of the world.[i] Notably, the gaps are widest precisely where opportunity is growing fastest: digital innovation and scaling businesses. Women are less than half as likely as men to be entrepreneurially active in the information and communications technology sector, which has a critical role in the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution. [ii]
Two challenges stand out as urgent. The first is the persistent funding gap that limits the scale of women-led businesses. The second concerns AI and digitalization: women continue to start fewer businesses in these critical technology sectors. Indeed, women entrepreneurs are being left behind by particularly significant margins in technology-driven and investment-rich arenas, such as AI, where entrepreneurial opportunities are growing fastest. These challenges are pervasive and intertwined, but not inevitable. They are the product of specific cultural norms, policy structures, and systemic failures that can be addressed through coordinated action.
Persistent funding challenges for women’s businesses
Gender influences the outcomes of business funding at every stage, even before an entrepreneur decides to start a business. Women’s labor force participation lags behind that of men across the world, and this has significant consequences for initial venture funding, where entrepreneurs typically resort to their own savings and to those who are close to them.
Women’s labor force participation and early-stage funding of their ventures
Despite significant gains in women’s labor force participation in the US, especially in the 1990s, it remains persistently below that of men.[iii] Women, more so than men, find themselves in charge of the care of children and aging parents.[iv] Without work, women’s access to capital and support, critical for starting a business, suffers.
Social capital is essential for finding early funders. By staying at home, women lose access to networks at work that may serve as pipelines for early funders and informal investors. Globally, in recent years, two-thirds of informal early-stage business investments went to men, and over three-quarters of men invested most recently in other men. These data indicate that women remain underrepresented as both investors and recipients of informal startup investment.[v] Women are also less likely to have investors and entrepreneurial role models in their social networks than men, further undermining their future startup efforts.[vi] In addition, women who stay at home instead of working also lose the credibility that more formal investors link to continuous employment.
Funding of women’s ventures by formal venture investors
Beyond the first startup funds from bootstrapping and close networks, the gap between female and male entrepreneurs widens further when it comes to formal investment. Reflecting global trends in formal equity funding, the 2024 PitchBook report from the US revealed that the share of venture capital funding for women-led ventures actually decreased in 2024 in both deal count (about 25%) and deal value (about 20%).[vii] In Europe, in 2024, female-founded companies represented 12% of the total venture capital raised by startups.[viii] Even in the European country with the most gender parity, Finland, only 30% of all venture capital went to companies founded or led by women.[ix]
These numbers worsen when limiting the data to venture investment only to all-female-founded companies. In the US, for example, these companies historically only receive approximately 2%–3% of the investments that all-male-founded companies receive.[x] Some of the fastest-growing sectors of the economy have the worst gender imbalance. For example, only 1% of deal value, and 2.9% of deal count, went to all-female-founded fintech companies in 2024.[xi]
Notably, these investment behaviors are not rooted in any economic rationale indicating that women-founded companies are poor investment targets. In fact, in 2024, a quarter of exits—the ultimate goal that investors have for the companies they fund—in the US were from female-led startups.[xii] These are startups that, depending on their year of first raise, accounted for ≤2.3% of the capital deployed that year.[xiii] In other words, women-led companies that do secure funding can and do outperform for their investors when it comes to exits and in comparison to the overall startup population.
Why do women’s businesses not receive more attention from formal investors? One clear answer is the gendered selection of entrepreneurs across industries that attract investors in the first place.
Women’s business ownership in fast-growing digital sectors
The intersection of funding and digitalization presents a unique challenge to women entrepreneurs’ progress. Equitable access to both capital and digital tools is a prerequisite for thriving in contemporary entrepreneurial landscapes. AI and digital tools now influence everything from customer discovery to product development. Yet women entrepreneurs are less likely to adopt or experiment with these tools, potentially slowing their progress and innovation. For example, in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor surveys, women rated AI as being important for their businesses 11% less often than men.[xiv] Similar patterns were found in an analysis of 140,000+ individuals worldwide: women use generative AI less than men do.[xv]
Beyond experimenting with digital and AI tools to enhance business processes, women are also less likely to lead technology ventures that develop these tools themselves. The Web 3.0 space, characterized by blockchain-based decentralized technology, vividly illustrates this pattern: while the sector has attracted enormous investment, only 7% of founders are women.[xvi] This is likely due to sector-specific culture and institutions that reflect the male dominance of both the finance and technology sectors.[xvii] Technology sectors not only drive economic growth; they also attract the highest investments. Underrepresentation in these domains compounds the gender funding gap: the few women who do break into the sector do not fit investors’ mental model of being fundable. This means, for example, that among Web 3.0 companies, all-male founding teams raise nearly four times as much equity capital, on average, as all-female teams.[xviii] To be sure, the most significant challenge facing women entrepreneurs globally is not only that they are underfunded or underrepresented in digital sectors but also that these two issues intensify one another.
Recommendations for a more inclusive funding and digital innovation landscape
With fewer women in the labor market, senior leadership, and technology sectors, the gendered funding gap remains one of the most complex challenges in women’s entrepreneurship worldwide. Yet it is solvable if policymakers and ecosystem builders target the root causes, not just the symptoms.
A critical root cause is cultural perception. Because of societies’ expectations of what women are supposed to do, women typically have lower levels of entrepreneurial self-efficacy, which is the belief in one’s skills and abilities as entrepreneurs, even when their objective and measurable skills and abilities are at the same level as those of men.[xix] Even in high-income countries, the confidence gaps are surprisingly wide: compared with men, women are 22% less likely to have confidence in their startup skills, 17% less likely to see new business opportunities, and 11% less likely to be undeterred by a fear of failure.[xx] These gaps do not reflect true competence but reflect environments that implicitly signal who “belongs” in startups and entrepreneurial ventures.
Another problem concerns the global funding discourse: the amount of capital raised receives disproportionate attention as a measure of success in the startup ecosystem, despite being relevant to only certain industries and geographic areas that have access to venture capital. Yet, in the US, the largest venture capital market in the world, only 0.3% of all business owners ever receive venture capital.[xxi] Overreliance on this single metric creates distorted expectations for entrepreneurs who are led to believe that being able to attract capital from investors makes the business successful—or, in reverse, that growth that is financed by revenues from the business itself is somehow less valuable than growth enabled by outside capital. This means that much of the conversation on how to support women entrepreneurs has focused on capital access, where women “need help.”[xxii]
Rather than “fixing women” and their businesses to fit this narrow mold, the goal should be for both global and local discourse to appreciate the varied and inclusive ways in which entrepreneurs build their businesses. To get there, we can start by changing our collective narrative around equity funding in entrepreneurship. Policymakers, global economic organizations, educators, and business leaders should question the relevance of this metric and shift toward measuring and communicating success indicators that are relevant for all business owners, including women: profitability, meaningful employment, community impact, family wealth, upward mobility, and savings for the future. Once the conversation on entrepreneurial success reflects these realities, new and more inclusive funding models than today’s venture capital are likely to emerge. If we can simultaneously champion global digital literacy and initiatives promoting digital skills among women, we can ensure that they are equipped to not only to participate but also lead as entrepreneurs in AI-driven markets and digital ecosystems.
[i] Amanda Elam and Mahsa Samsami, GEM 2024/2025 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report: Navigating Challenges, Driving Change (London: Global Entrepreneurship Research Association, 2025), 18, https://www.gemconsortium.org/report/gem-20242025-womens-entrepreneurship-report-navigating-challenges-driving-change-2
[ii]Elam and Samsami, GEM 2024/2025 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report, 8.
[iii] Elise Gould et al., “Good News and Bad News about U.S. Labor Force Participation: Many Headwinds from the 2010s Are Gone, but We’re Not Investing Enough in the Future,” Economic Policy Institute, September 25, 2025, https://www.epi.org/publication/good-news-and-bad-news-about-u-s-labor-force-participation-many-headwinds-from-the-2010s-are-gone-but-were-not-investing-enough-in-the-future/.
[iv] McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.Org, Women in the Workplace 2020 (New York: McKinsey & Company, 2020), 6, https://wiw-report.s3.amazonaws.com/Women_in_the_Workplace_2020.pdf
[v] Elam and Samsami, GEM 2024/2025 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report, 52.
[vi] Kim Klyver and Sharon Grant, “Gender Differences in Entrepreneurial Networking and Participation,” International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship 2, no. 3 (2010): 213–27, https://doi.org/10.1108/17566261011079215 .
[vii] PitchBook, 2024 US All In: Female Founders in the VC Ecosystem (Seattle: PitchBook, March 5, 2025), 5-8, https://files.pitchbook.com/website/files/pdf/2024_US_All_In_Female_Founders_in_the_VC_Ecosystem.pdf.
[viii] Sofia Chesnokova, “Female-Founded Startups Are Driving Europe’s Deep Tech Sector, Securing €5.76B in Funding in 2024: Full Report,” Tech Funding News, March 6, 2025, https://techfundingnews.com/female-founded-startups-are-driving-europes-deep-tech-sector-securing-e5-76b-in-funding-in-2024-full-report/.
[ix] Sofia Chesnokova, “Finland’s VC Funding for Women Hits 30%—But Where Are the Women of Colour?,” Tech Funding News, April 29, 2025, https://techfundingnews.com/finlands-vc-funding-for-women-hits-30-but-where-are-the-women-of-colour/.
[x] PitchBook, “PitchBook Report on Women in VC Ecosystem Highlights Resilience and Strong Performance of Female Founders amid Market Headwinds,” press release, PR Newswire, November 3, 2022, https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pitchbook-report-on-women-in-vc-ecosystem-highlights-resilience-and-strong-performance-of-female-founders-amid-market-headwinds-301667083.html.
[xi] PitchBook, 2024 US All In, 21.
[xii] PitchBook, 2024 US All In, 4.
[xiii] Lisa Calhoun, “PitchBook All-In Report: Female Founders See Uneven Gains, Fintech Lags,” Valor Ventures, March 6, 2025, https://valor.vc/pitchbook-all-in-report-female-founders-see-uneven-gains/.
[xiv] Elam and Samsami, GEM 2024/2025 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report, 8.
[xv] Otis, N. G., Delecourt, S., Cranney, K., & Koning, R. “Global evidence on gender gaps and generative AI,” 2024, Harvard Business School Working Paper 25-023: https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/25023_52957d6c-0378-4796-99fa-aab684b3b2f8.pdf
[xvi] Jessica Apotheker et al., “Web3 Already Has a Gender Diversity Problem,” Boston Consulting Group, February 16, 2023, https://www.bcg.com/publications/2023/how-to-unravel-lack-of-gender-diversity-web3.
[xvii] Ylva Baeckström et al., ”Women’s Career Success in the Financial Services Industry: Systematic Literature Review and Future Research Directions,” Gender, Work & Organization 32, no 5 (2025): 1994 – 2012; Elam and Samsami, GEM 2024/2025 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report.
[xviii] Elam and Samsami, GEM 2024/2025 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report.
[xix] Fiona Wilson, Jill Kickul, and Deborah Marlino, “Gender, Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy, and Entrepreneurial Career Intentions: Implications for Entrepreneurship Education,” Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice 31, no. 3 (2007): 387–406, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6520.2007.00179.x.
[xx] Elam and Samsami, GEM 2024/2025 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report, 8-57.
[xxi] Howard Aldrich and Martin Ruef, “Scholars Should Study Everyday Entrepreneurs, Not Gazelles,” Entrepreneur & Innovation Exchange, January 6, 2020, https://eiexchange.com/content/Scholars-should-study-everyday-entrepreneurs-not-gazelles.
[xxii] Maija Renko, “Opinion: Here’s How to Support Women Entrepreneurs,” Crain’s Chicago Business, January 17, 2023, https://www.chicagobusiness.com/opinion/heres-how-support-women-entrepreneurs.
Global Innovation Reimagined
Global Innovation Reimagined showcases reflections and research on innovation in its many forms across Asia, North America, and Europe. The perspectives offered herein draw from discussions during the trilateral Reimagining Entrepreneurship and Innovation conference, hosted by CAPRI, CAPRI USA, the University of Virginia, and Copenhagen Business School from July 22 to 25, 2025.
Venture Funding, Digitalization, and the Need for a New Narrative on Women’s Entrepreneurship
Author
Maija Renko
Aalto University, Finland
Biography
Maija Renko is a professor of entrepreneurship at Aalto University School of Business in Finland. Her research and teaching interests are focused on the early stages of the entrepreneurial process, social entrepreneurship, and technology entrepreneurship. Her research has been published in leading management and entrepreneurship journals, such as the Journal of Management, Journal of Business Venturing, and Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice. Maija received her DSc degree from Turku School of Economics and a PhD in business administration from Florida International University. Between 2007 and 2019, she worked at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she was promoted to full professor in 2019. From 2019 to 2024, she served as professor and Coleman Chair of Entrepreneurship in the Driehaus College of Business at DePaul University.
Women’s entrepreneurship is celebrated as a powerful engine of economic growth and inclusion. Yet, despite decades of progress, women founders are still held back in the very domains shaping the future. According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor GEM 2024/2025 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report, women are about 20% less likely to start a business than men, with their entrepreneurial activity lagging behind men’s in nearly every region of the world.[i] Notably, the gaps are widest precisely where opportunity is growing fastest: digital innovation and scaling businesses. Women are less than half as likely as men to be entrepreneurially active in the information and communications technology sector, which has a critical role in the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution. [ii]
Two challenges stand out as urgent. The first is the persistent funding gap that limits the scale of women-led businesses. The second concerns AI and digitalization: women continue to start fewer businesses in these critical technology sectors. Indeed, women entrepreneurs are being left behind by particularly significant margins in technology-driven and investment-rich arenas, such as AI, where entrepreneurial opportunities are growing fastest. These challenges are pervasive and intertwined, but not inevitable. They are the product of specific cultural norms, policy structures, and systemic failures that can be addressed through coordinated action.
Persistent funding challenges for women’s businesses
Gender influences the outcomes of business funding at every stage, even before an entrepreneur decides to start a business. Women’s labor force participation lags behind that of men across the world, and this has significant consequences for initial venture funding, where entrepreneurs typically resort to their own savings and to those who are close to them.
Women’s labor force participation and early-stage funding of their ventures
Despite significant gains in women’s labor force participation in the US, especially in the 1990s, it remains persistently below that of men.[iii] Women, more so than men, find themselves in charge of the care of children and aging parents.[iv] Without work, women’s access to capital and support, critical for starting a business, suffers.
Social capital is essential for finding early funders. By staying at home, women lose access to networks at work that may serve as pipelines for early funders and informal investors. Globally, in recent years, two-thirds of informal early-stage business investments went to men, and over three-quarters of men invested most recently in other men. These data indicate that women remain underrepresented as both investors and recipients of informal startup investment.[v] Women are also less likely to have investors and entrepreneurial role models in their social networks than men, further undermining their future startup efforts.[vi] In addition, women who stay at home instead of working also lose the credibility that more formal investors link to continuous employment.
Funding of women’s ventures by formal venture investors
Beyond the first startup funds from bootstrapping and close networks, the gap between female and male entrepreneurs widens further when it comes to formal investment. Reflecting global trends in formal equity funding, the 2024 PitchBook report from the US revealed that the share of venture capital funding for women-led ventures actually decreased in 2024 in both deal count (about 25%) and deal value (about 20%).[vii] In Europe, in 2024, female-founded companies represented 12% of the total venture capital raised by startups.[viii] Even in the European country with the most gender parity, Finland, only 30% of all venture capital went to companies founded or led by women.[ix]
These numbers worsen when limiting the data to venture investment only to all-female-founded companies. In the US, for example, these companies historically only receive approximately 2%–3% of the investments that all-male-founded companies receive.[x] Some of the fastest-growing sectors of the economy have the worst gender imbalance. For example, only 1% of deal value, and 2.9% of deal count, went to all-female-founded fintech companies in 2024.[xi]
Notably, these investment behaviors are not rooted in any economic rationale indicating that women-founded companies are poor investment targets. In fact, in 2024, a quarter of exits—the ultimate goal that investors have for the companies they fund—in the US were from female-led startups.[xii] These are startups that, depending on their year of first raise, accounted for ≤2.3% of the capital deployed that year.[xiii] In other words, women-led companies that do secure funding can and do outperform for their investors when it comes to exits and in comparison to the overall startup population.
Why do women’s businesses not receive more attention from formal investors? One clear answer is the gendered selection of entrepreneurs across industries that attract investors in the first place.
Women’s business ownership in fast-growing digital sectors
The intersection of funding and digitalization presents a unique challenge to women entrepreneurs’ progress. Equitable access to both capital and digital tools is a prerequisite for thriving in contemporary entrepreneurial landscapes. AI and digital tools now influence everything from customer discovery to product development. Yet women entrepreneurs are less likely to adopt or experiment with these tools, potentially slowing their progress and innovation. For example, in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor surveys, women rated AI as being important for their businesses 11% less often than men.[xiv] Similar patterns were found in an analysis of 140,000+ individuals worldwide: women use generative AI less than men do.[xv]
Beyond experimenting with digital and AI tools to enhance business processes, women are also less likely to lead technology ventures that develop these tools themselves. The Web 3.0 space, characterized by blockchain-based decentralized technology, vividly illustrates this pattern: while the sector has attracted enormous investment, only 7% of founders are women.[xvi] This is likely due to sector-specific culture and institutions that reflect the male dominance of both the finance and technology sectors.[xvii] Technology sectors not only drive economic growth; they also attract the highest investments. Underrepresentation in these domains compounds the gender funding gap: the few women who do break into the sector do not fit investors’ mental model of being fundable. This means, for example, that among Web 3.0 companies, all-male founding teams raise nearly four times as much equity capital, on average, as all-female teams.[xviii] To be sure, the most significant challenge facing women entrepreneurs globally is not only that they are underfunded or underrepresented in digital sectors but also that these two issues intensify one another.
Recommendations for a more inclusive funding and digital innovation landscape
With fewer women in the labor market, senior leadership, and technology sectors, the gendered funding gap remains one of the most complex challenges in women’s entrepreneurship worldwide. Yet it is solvable if policymakers and ecosystem builders target the root causes, not just the symptoms.
A critical root cause is cultural perception. Because of societies’ expectations of what women are supposed to do, women typically have lower levels of entrepreneurial self-efficacy, which is the belief in one’s skills and abilities as entrepreneurs, even when their objective and measurable skills and abilities are at the same level as those of men.[xix] Even in high-income countries, the confidence gaps are surprisingly wide: compared with men, women are 22% less likely to have confidence in their startup skills, 17% less likely to see new business opportunities, and 11% less likely to be undeterred by a fear of failure.[xx] These gaps do not reflect true competence but reflect environments that implicitly signal who “belongs” in startups and entrepreneurial ventures.
Another problem concerns the global funding discourse: the amount of capital raised receives disproportionate attention as a measure of success in the startup ecosystem, despite being relevant to only certain industries and geographic areas that have access to venture capital. Yet, in the US, the largest venture capital market in the world, only 0.3% of all business owners ever receive venture capital.[xxi] Overreliance on this single metric creates distorted expectations for entrepreneurs who are led to believe that being able to attract capital from investors makes the business successful—or, in reverse, that growth that is financed by revenues from the business itself is somehow less valuable than growth enabled by outside capital. This means that much of the conversation on how to support women entrepreneurs has focused on capital access, where women “need help.”[xxii]
Rather than “fixing women” and their businesses to fit this narrow mold, the goal should be for both global and local discourse to appreciate the varied and inclusive ways in which entrepreneurs build their businesses. To get there, we can start by changing our collective narrative around equity funding in entrepreneurship. Policymakers, global economic organizations, educators, and business leaders should question the relevance of this metric and shift toward measuring and communicating success indicators that are relevant for all business owners, including women: profitability, meaningful employment, community impact, family wealth, upward mobility, and savings for the future. Once the conversation on entrepreneurial success reflects these realities, new and more inclusive funding models than today’s venture capital are likely to emerge. If we can simultaneously champion global digital literacy and initiatives promoting digital skills among women, we can ensure that they are equipped to not only to participate but also lead as entrepreneurs in AI-driven markets and digital ecosystems.
[i] Amanda Elam and Mahsa Samsami, GEM 2024/2025 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report: Navigating Challenges, Driving Change (London: Global Entrepreneurship Research Association, 2025), 18, https://www.gemconsortium.org/report/gem-20242025-womens-entrepreneurship-report-navigating-challenges-driving-change-2
[ii]Elam and Samsami, GEM 2024/2025 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report, 8.
[iii] Elise Gould et al., “Good News and Bad News about U.S. Labor Force Participation: Many Headwinds from the 2010s Are Gone, but We’re Not Investing Enough in the Future,” Economic Policy Institute, September 25, 2025, https://www.epi.org/publication/good-news-and-bad-news-about-u-s-labor-force-participation-many-headwinds-from-the-2010s-are-gone-but-were-not-investing-enough-in-the-future/.
[iv] McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.Org, Women in the Workplace 2020 (New York: McKinsey & Company, 2020), 6, https://wiw-report.s3.amazonaws.com/Women_in_the_Workplace_2020.pdf
[v] Elam and Samsami, GEM 2024/2025 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report, 52.
[vi] Kim Klyver and Sharon Grant, “Gender Differences in Entrepreneurial Networking and Participation,” International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship 2, no. 3 (2010): 213–27, https://doi.org/10.1108/17566261011079215 .
[vii] PitchBook, 2024 US All In: Female Founders in the VC Ecosystem (Seattle: PitchBook, March 5, 2025), 5-8, https://files.pitchbook.com/website/files/pdf/2024_US_All_In_Female_Founders_in_the_VC_Ecosystem.pdf.
[viii] Sofia Chesnokova, “Female-Founded Startups Are Driving Europe’s Deep Tech Sector, Securing €5.76B in Funding in 2024: Full Report,” Tech Funding News, March 6, 2025, https://techfundingnews.com/female-founded-startups-are-driving-europes-deep-tech-sector-securing-e5-76b-in-funding-in-2024-full-report/.
[ix] Sofia Chesnokova, “Finland’s VC Funding for Women Hits 30%—But Where Are the Women of Colour?,” Tech Funding News, April 29, 2025, https://techfundingnews.com/finlands-vc-funding-for-women-hits-30-but-where-are-the-women-of-colour/.
[x] PitchBook, “PitchBook Report on Women in VC Ecosystem Highlights Resilience and Strong Performance of Female Founders amid Market Headwinds,” press release, PR Newswire, November 3, 2022, https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pitchbook-report-on-women-in-vc-ecosystem-highlights-resilience-and-strong-performance-of-female-founders-amid-market-headwinds-301667083.html.
[xi] PitchBook, 2024 US All In, 21.
[xii] PitchBook, 2024 US All In, 4.
[xiii] Lisa Calhoun, “PitchBook All-In Report: Female Founders See Uneven Gains, Fintech Lags,” Valor Ventures, March 6, 2025, https://valor.vc/pitchbook-all-in-report-female-founders-see-uneven-gains/.
[xiv] Elam and Samsami, GEM 2024/2025 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report, 8.
[xv] Otis, N. G., Delecourt, S., Cranney, K., & Koning, R. “Global evidence on gender gaps and generative AI,” 2024, Harvard Business School Working Paper 25-023: https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/25023_52957d6c-0378-4796-99fa-aab684b3b2f8.pdf
[xvi] Jessica Apotheker et al., “Web3 Already Has a Gender Diversity Problem,” Boston Consulting Group, February 16, 2023, https://www.bcg.com/publications/2023/how-to-unravel-lack-of-gender-diversity-web3.
[xvii] Ylva Baeckström et al., ”Women’s Career Success in the Financial Services Industry: Systematic Literature Review and Future Research Directions,” Gender, Work & Organization 32, no 5 (2025): 1994 – 2012; Elam and Samsami, GEM 2024/2025 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report.
[xviii] Elam and Samsami, GEM 2024/2025 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report.
[xix] Fiona Wilson, Jill Kickul, and Deborah Marlino, “Gender, Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy, and Entrepreneurial Career Intentions: Implications for Entrepreneurship Education,” Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice 31, no. 3 (2007): 387–406, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6520.2007.00179.x.
[xx] Elam and Samsami, GEM 2024/2025 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report, 8-57.
[xxi] Howard Aldrich and Martin Ruef, “Scholars Should Study Everyday Entrepreneurs, Not Gazelles,” Entrepreneur & Innovation Exchange, January 6, 2020, https://eiexchange.com/content/Scholars-should-study-everyday-entrepreneurs-not-gazelles.
[xxii] Maija Renko, “Opinion: Here’s How to Support Women Entrepreneurs,” Crain’s Chicago Business, January 17, 2023, https://www.chicagobusiness.com/opinion/heres-how-support-women-entrepreneurs.
Global Innovation Reimagined
Global Innovation Reimagined showcases reflections and research on innovation in its many forms across Asia, North America, and Europe. The perspectives offered herein draw from discussions during the trilateral Reimagining Entrepreneurship and Innovation conference, hosted by CAPRI, CAPRI USA, the University of Virginia, and Copenhagen Business School from July 22 to 25, 2025.
About the Author
Maija Renko
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