Giving Compass' Take:

• Kate Cox explores the discrepancies between capital flow for female and male agriculture entrepreneurs. 

• How can funders work to improve the data available on gaps in capital flow? Can impact investing help to close the gap? 

• read about women in impact investing. 

More than two years ago, I set out to report what I thought was a fairly straightforward story about gender inequality among chefs. I’d been inspired by Hungry, a 2016 documentary from director Patty Ivins, to explore a matter even more prickly than gender in restaurant kitchens—gender and money in restaurant kitchens.

The film had me thinking specifically about how women chefs are perceived once they’re successful enough to seek the capital to scale up an existing restaurant—or open a new location—and whether those perceptions impact how much they can raise.

Surprisingly, there wasn’t a lot out there on the subject. Though, there was this: According to the Small Business Administration, only 4 percent of the total dollar value of all small business loans go to women entrepreneurs.

So, I asked around. Some women I talked to said they had maxed out credit cards, or used personal or family loans to fund their restaurant enterprise. Some, who already had track records and many years in the industry, said they felt they’d been overlooked for business loans from their local banks, while their greener male counterparts were launching big, shiny ventures just down the street. Still others said that even talking about whether there were funding disparities between men and women working in the culinary world shined too harsh a light on gender and would make it even harder to move their profession out of the male/female binary.

Are funding results for women actually different than they are for men? If they are, why? And how would we know? I sought the answer to those questions by doing what reporters do. I searched for data to back up the body of personal experience reflected in my notes.

Turns out, finding data on funding for women-owned restaurants is harder even than running one. And if you want to know about how women running food- or agriculture-centered enterprises outside the restaurant world are faring, there’s even less.

That’s in part because we don’t really know that much about what women entrepreneurs in any sector raise versus their male peers.

Read the full article about women-led agriculture enterprises by Kate Cox at The New Food Economy.