PwC & Crowdfunding Centre: Women Entrepreneurs Outperform Men – Given the Opportunity

Women Climbing RiskPwC and the Crowdfunding Centre are prepping to jointly publish a report in early 2017 entitled “Women Unbound”.  Their initial feedback indicates that women led crowdfunding campaigns are significantly more successful than those led by men across most industries – and across the world.

The forthcoming report is said to have analyzed hundreds of thousands of crowdfunding campaigns and shows an inherent and historic bias is still endemic in traditional funding mechanisms for businesses, where women entrepreneurs typically receive less than 10% and men more than 90%.

This new data-set, collected by the Centre over three years, is said to have proven that this bias against women “evaporates” in the crowdfunding space. The report investigates the trends and offers recommendations as to how traditional funding models can be adapted, using the lessons this crowdfunding data provides, to re-balance this issue.

The Women Unbound report will be presented and discussed at the Deep Impact Conference scheduled to take place in London on November 24, 2016.  There will be a panel including representatives from both PwC and the Crowdfunding Centre as well as others.

barry-jamesBarry E James, Founder/CEO The Crowdfunding Centre, commented on the report;

“The data is remarkably consistent, over both time and different industries and geographies. It clearly shows that while around twice as many men as women launch crowdfunds the women’s campaigns do at least as well – and mostly better. The data is telling us that, as with STEM subjects, there is a historic and unconscious bias inherent in the perceptions upon which decisions are based in the traditional economy – evident because when the gray suit factor is removed, and the crowd decides on the merits of the campaign, it effectively evaporates.”

James described the findings very important as it offers insight as to how to tackle the challenge.

“This is a very important … correcting a historic injustice, as well as bringing potentially huge benefits to both women and society as a whole,” said James.

jon-terryPwC Partner Jon Terry called the report a solid base of data which was previously untapped.

“In many business decisions, be that in hiring, promotions, pay and opportunities, unconscious bias is at the root of inequality. While in entrepreneurial funding and finance, there has traditionally been a very wide gender disparity, we’ve all lacked a solid base of data to be able to make comparisons. Which is why this massive data-set is proving so valuable, allowing us to have a basis for comparisons across sectors and geographies as well as gender, to see if unconscious bias plays a part in funding decisions which has not previously been possible.”



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