Happy International Women’s Day 🚺

International Women’s Day is a day celebrating women’s achievements. The theme for this year is choose to challenge, emphasizing the choice to challenge for change. In 2021, the world is still far from a gender-equal world, and sharing information about the need for change is critical. Unfortunately, the pandemic has affected women more than men, as women play a disproportionate role as frontline healthcare workers and as caregivers at home. Unpaid women’s care work has increased due to school closures as well as increased elderly care. Women have also been harder hit in their pocket books by the economic downtown caused by COVID-19.

How to forge a gender equal world?
Much more work that needs to be done to empower females for a future gender-equal world. Of the 560+ startups that went public in the last 12 months, only three were women-founded. The private company space has not made better strides either. 

• In PrivCo’s latest research on diversity, we discovered that companies founded or led by women in the C-suite raised $2.6BN less in 2020 compared to the previous year, or an 11.9% drop.
• Funding for women leaders and founders covered only 13.4% of all funding in 2020. 
• The number of companies that raised funding dropped by 44.9%. 
• However, on a positive note, companies who raised funds raised $7MM on average more than they did the year before. 

Get more statistics on private company of minority groups, including women, in PrivCo’s report Funding Diversity.