ie Stevanja, co-founder of Australian activewear business Stylerunner and discount shopping app Her Black Book, has experienced this inequality first-hand.  “When we started Stylerunner, we did a lot of research. We had great data on public companies – big ones, like Lululemon and the big sports brands. But to see how rapidly [the activewear space] was moving, it certainly helped if you were part of that demographic [that was buying it],” Stevanja told Inside Retail recently. Most of the investors Stevanja was pitching were men, however, and they didn’t seem to understand the Stylerunner business, which was geared towards women, or the commercial opportunity.  “I remember once saying in the very early days, ‘We’re like the Net-A-Porter of activewear,’ and they didn’t even know that retailer. That makes it difficult,” she said.  While Stevanja ultimately grew Stylerunner and sold it to footwear giant Accent Group in 2019, she said the challenge of raising funds as a female founder can be “frustrating and demoralising and have a real impact on your chance of success”. Lack of diversity in investment community Startup Muster data shows that women hold just 11 per cent of senior positions in investment decision-making. This could explain why many female-founded businesses struggle to raise funding, especially if they’re solving a problem experienced mainly by women.  “I did find it more challenging when I was presenting to a team entirely of men, because they couldn’t see the usage of the product, and they would go by their latest meeting of what they felt beauty was doing,” Trinny Woodall, founder of Trinny London, a beauty brand for women in their 30s, 40s and 50s, told Inside Retail.   “Generally, that was about younger brands with a younger audience. They were nervous about the target audience I was addressing because they didn’t understand that it was a really underrepresented marketplace.” Woodall said that some male venture capitalists told her, “If you do this for younger people, it will succeed, but if you do it for the market you’re addressing, it won’t.” Of course, that is not what happened. Woodall launched Trinny London in 2017, and now has local e-commerce sites in Australia, the UK, Canada, the US, New Zealand and Sweden, and a presence in upscale department stores, including Harvey Nichols and Saks. The brand’s annual revenue is said to be more than £50 million ($89 million). Lost economic opportunities Adore Beauty founder Kate Morris said the underfunding of businesses women found is a lost economic opportunity.  Research shows that businesses with at least one female co-founder deliver better results. And Deloitte found that the 341 active businesses supported by female entrepreneur-focused SBE, Heads Over Heels and Scale Investors facilitated $1 billion in economic activity for the Australian economy and nearly 4,900 full-time equivalent roles across the country in FY21.  “We need more diversity in the investor base,” Morris told Inside Retail. “Private equity in Australia, for example, has only 3 per cent of senior roles held by women. And the data suggests that women general partners are up to two times as likely to invest in women founders.”  That is one of the reasons Morris has a mandate to employ 50 per cent women at every level of Glow Capital Partners, the private equity firm she co-founded in 2021. In doing so, Morris believes the firm will make better investment decisions.  “In particular, I’ve observed challenges for consumer brands in their earlier stages; there’s a lack of institutional funding for these businesses, and women tend to lack the personal networks to reach angel investors like high-net-worth individuals,” she said.  Voting with their feet Of course, bringing more women into private equity and venture capital firms won’t happen overnight.  “There’s been a little bit of improvement, but really nowhere near the improvement that’s needed,” Stevanja said about the pace of change in this space. In the meantime, she is doing her part to support female founders through the Festival of Her, an annual online event that encourages consumers to think twice about where they spend their hard-earned dollars and make a habit of choosing female-owned businesses.  Held in March to coincide with International Women’s Day, the Festival of Her offers Her Black Book users exclusive discounts and cashback on more than 200 female-founded brands. This year, the event drove a 10-fold increase in daily app usage and significant exposure for participating brands.  “It’s really a call to action to support more women in business because of the inequalities that exist,” Stevanja explained.  “We’re not just talking about the difficulty in getting funding. There are lots of inequalities in this space. Gender pay gaps could mean that someone starting a business has less of a nest egg to invest in their business.” As an extension of the Festival of Her campaign, Her Black Book is also running a female founder mentoring program to further support, guide and offer a friendly helping hand to early and mid-stage businesses. “We see ourselves in the same fight as the female founders around us,” Stevanja said. “We’re striving hard every single day. Some of that is for this generation, but at the very least, maybe we can impact the next generation.”