Recent studies highlight challenges, successes of female founders and women in academia

As the country celebrates Women’s History Month two recent reports, one from the National Academy of Inventors and another from PitchBook, feature women’s achievements and offer recommendations to encourage more participation from women.

The report from the National Academy of Inventors highlights key findings on academic women participating in entrepreneurship, invention, and innovation from data collected through a survey. The report identifies the factors encouraging and discouraging women from participating in technology commercialization in academia and provides actionable recommendations to promote more engagement from women and other underrepresented groups throughout the innovation process. According to the report, fostering inclusion for all inventors will maximize Gross Domestic Product.

PitchBook has also recently released its U.S. Venture Capital Female Founders Dashboard. This dashboard features a detailed look at investment trends for women in the U.S. over the last 14 years, investigating investment deal counts by stage, state and industry. The report noted that while venture capital funding has grown overall in the past few years, investments for female founders have not increased at the same rate. Companies founded by women in 2021 only saw about 2.1 percent of the total capital invested in venture-backed startups in the U.S., according to the report. However, 2021 did see the creation of many new funds, incubators, and companies led by women. The data collected in this dashboard determined that despite the challenges facing women in this industry, women consistently won a higher percentage of awards than their representation in the competitor pool.