We must do more to help women found university spin-outs

When you hear the word entrepreneur, who comes to mind? A titan of technology perhaps. Or a sharp-suited City type. Or maybe a future Nobel laureate beavering away in the lab. Chances are, whatever the stereotype, you’re probably thinking of a man.

You shouldn’t feel too bad about that. There remains a colossal gender gulf between business founders. This is despite the fact that revenues generated by women-led start-ups are 10 per cent higher than those led by men.

According to the consultancy Beauhurst, less than 8 per cent of UK university spin-outs had all-women founding teams in 2023, while more than 75 per cent were all-male. Even that is a significant improvement on 2016, when the all-women figure was zero – but if progress continues at this pace, it will take half a century to bridge the gap.

Women's under-representation in university-born enterprises is not for lack of talent. According to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa), 54 per cent of STEM students in UK higher education in 2021/22 were women.

The University of Oxford’s Increasing Diversity in Enterprising Activities (Idea) initiative aims to promote inclusivity in entrepreneurial activities, starting with the under-representation of women. We’ve set a target to increase the proportion of women founders or co-founders from the 15 per cent that it was in 2015-16 to 34 per cent by 2025, and we’re making progress. Over the past eight years, the proportion of women founders and co-founders of Oxford spin-outs has reached 28 per cent.

We know there is still work to be done to address structural issues underpinning the gender disparity. Oxford’s existing women founders have told us that they experience systemic bias throughout their entrepreneurial journeys, but the measures in place to increase women's participation tend to focus on training to enhance women’s skills, rather than addressing the structural and wider behavioural issues they face regardless of their skills.

We heard that educating men to demonstrate more encouraging, constructive behaviours would help to inspire women’s confidence and assertiveness. A lack of visible women role models reinforces the masculinised stereotype of a business leader, so it would also be helpful to implement continuous training to confront stereotypes, both within academic institutions and the wider innovation ecosystem.

According to the British Business Bank, 89p in every £1 of UK venture capital investment in 2019 went to all-male founder teams. The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), meanwhile, found that average investments in companies across the world founded or co-founded by women were half those in firms founded by men. BCG reports that start-ups founded by women accounted for just 2 per cent of funds raised in key European markets.

This is not just about equity; it’s also about economics. In 2019, BCG showed that if barriers to women in entrepreneurship were removed, global GDP could rise by up to 6 per cent, or $5 trillion (£3.9 trillion).

The UK government’s recently commissioned independent review of university spin-outs recognises the opportunities and the challenges. Women find it more difficult to get investment in patents and to convince investors to keep them in leadership positions (influenced, according to the Harvard Business Review, by a range of economic, cultural and political factors). But the review stopped short of offering detailed recommendations to help shift the balance.

What is needed is a plan to get to an equal gender split among spin-out founders by 2030. Here are five recommendations that we’ve gathered from our women-founder community:

1. Acknowledge, fund and start addressing the institutional and economic barriers preventing women from engaging in entrepreneurial activities, including awareness of the uneven burden of caring responsibilities. 
2. Provide dedicated support in postgraduate and postdoctoral studies to uplift women to engage confidently in entrepreneurship, including women-focudsed national and regional networks for sharing experiences, mentorship, training and guidance. 
3. Promote unconscious- and conscious-bias training across organisations and throughout entrepreneurial and investment education to challenge prevailing stereotypes affecting women-led enterprises. 
4. Work with the investment community and government to increase funding dedicated to women-led ventures and increase the number of venture capital investors who are women.
5. Boost attendance of women at conferences and events to increase the numbers of role models, networking and investment opportunities that showcase women entrepreneurs.

There have been some excellent initiatives from universities and their technology transfer offices that have lowered the barriers to women’s participation in entrepreneurship. Progress has been made. But society should be more impatient for the day when the gender balance among entrepreneurs reflects the gender balance in the general population.

Mairi Gibbs is chief operating officer of Oxford University Innovation. From 8 April, she will be interim CEO.