Women entrepreneurs run 30% of all small businesses, and women-owned businesses employ 7.9 million people. It is estimated that

these businesses generated around $1.4 trillion in total sales in 2015. But despite these undeniable successes,

women entrepreneurs face significant challenges, chief among them access to funding.

Women-owned businesses receive just 7% of venture capital, and loan approval rates for women entrepreneurs are

15% to 20% lower than for men. All these facts indicate that women-owned businesses suffer from

صعوبات جمة.

But the question is: Why do women entrepreneurs find it so difficult to secure the funding their businesses need?

Here’s what we’ll try to answer:

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Read also:10 Tips for Women Entrepreneurs on How to Build a Company

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Women’s Businesses and Startup Challenges

It’s well known that no startup can easily secure the funding it needs to get off the ground, expand, or purchase equipment,

Investors and venture capitalists reject more projects than they fund, and the number of projects turned down

is higher than the number approved for funding.

This is due to many reasons, including—but not limited to—the idea’s lack of viability, strong competitors, or the founder’s failure to convince the investor of the project’s merits, and so on. But what matters here is that the challenges women-led ventures face

Startups face many challenges when seeking funding—so what about women-owned ventures?

ستكون مضاعفة.

Startups face many challenges when seeking funding—so what about women-owned ventures?

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Read also:4 Lessons from the Success Story of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer

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The Entrepreneurial Profile

Candida Brush, a professor of entrepreneurship at Babson College in the United States, pointed to a highly important issue: namely, that

The entrepreneurial profile is dominated by men. When we talk about this field, we almost unconsciously think of

Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs.

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As a result, when investors interact with women entrepreneurs, they may doubt that these women can

launch ventures like those created by Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs. This is a form of irrational bias—a prejudice

with no basis in fact.

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There is no evidence that women are incapable of achieving the same successes as the greatest men in the world.

Yet despite this illusion, women find it extremely difficult to secure the funding they need precisely because of it.

لمشروعها.

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Read also:The Success Story of Madam Walker, the Self-Made Millionaire

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Men Support Themselves

Like it or not, both business and politics remain overwhelmingly male-dominated: for every woman, there are four men, whether they are

businesspeople or politicians.

And 89% of venture capitalists are men, so women entrepreneurs’ funding applications are often overlooked

in favor of giving money to men.

It’s a kind of “tribalism” in the world of finance and business—but unfortunately, women have to deal with it, if not adapt to it. And with

There are female investors, and companies with women in management are often more likely to invest in startups

run by women. This offers a glimmer of hope for women-led businesses, although the fair and logical approach is to fund ideas

that deserve support, without using gender (male/female) as a criterion.

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Read also:For Women Entrepreneurs: 5 Tips for Those Looking to Invest Through Crowdfunding

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The challenges women generally face in securing funding for their businesses will not be resolved overnight, but there

are many ways to overcome these setbacks. The most important are perseverance and women entrepreneurs’ belief in their ability to overcome these

التحديات.

Despite these many obstacles, women-led businesses and women’s entrepreneurship in general achieve considerable success, and

in every respect. Women entrepreneurs must not give up and should know that the road to success is long.