In the fight against climate change, entrepreneurship and innovation — known as "climate tech" — are essential. Women are more affected by climate change than men, and yet climate tech is a male-dominated field; in Canada, only one in 10 climate tech business founders are women and only 19 percent of climate tech startups have at least one female founder. When it comes to creating climate solutions, the female perspective is sorely lacking.

Investing in female entrepreneurs would generate higher returns for society as a whole, as women invest more of their income in their families compared to men. And as female-founded businesses tend to employ 2.5 times more women than male-founded businesses, empowering female entrepreneurs would also mean that more women could access job opportunities.

Female entrepreneurs are more likely than their male counterparts to innovate to address social needs, and women also score better than men in key skills such as leadership, problem-solving and innovation. Venture capital funding in climate tech is growing five times faster than the overall venture capital funding, indicating the high level of demand for this area of innovation. If women were able to access positions of leadership in this field, it would help to create wealth and reduce the gender wealth gap.

Access to capital is a key challenge faced by female entrepreneurs, with evidence showing that banks discriminate against them. In 2017, only 2 percent of venture capital funding in the U.S. went to all-female-founded startups. A study by Harvard, MIT, and Wharton School showed this gender bias: when the same idea was pitched by a male and a female voice, two-thirds of investors picked the male voice. This bias could be a product of the fact that 88 percent of decision-makers in venture capital firms are men.

How can we address the gender disparity in climate entrepreneurship?

  1. Incubators and accelerators
  2. A drive to recruit women in the tech and green sectors
  3. A drive to appoint more women to the boards of venture capital firms and banks

Read the full article about female climate entrepreneurs by Talal Rafi at GreenBiz.