By Rieva Lesonsky, Small Business Trends
I’ve been reading and writing about this issue for so long that I almost can’t believe it’s still an issue—but a plethora of data shows that women business owners are still falling woefully short when it comes to obtaining venture capital.
While some 41 percent of privately held U.S. companies are women-owned, only 3 to 5 percent of them obtain venture capital, according to the Center for Women’s Business Research. With the number of women-owned companies growing, shouldn’t barriers to venture capital be falling? In fact, the opposite seems to be happening.
Forbes Woman recently examined why venture capital remains a “man’s world.” Their article spotlighted Cindy Padnos, an entrepreneur who got interested in the topic in the 1990s when, seeking VC for her high-tech firm, she found that venture capitalists would ignore her during her presentations and talk to her male employees.
