New Zealand investment in women-only founding teams has more than tripled in a year, but a huge gender gap remains.
New Gender Investment Gap data from the Aotearoa Centre for Enterprising Women at the University of Auckland Business School shows these teams are still receiving less than six cents in every investment dollar, while male teams get 70 cents.
Women-only founding teams attracted $14.75 million in disclosed investments from Venture Capital (VC) firms during 2025, up from $4.59 million in 2024.
Their share of total disclosed investment capital has more than doubled, from 2.9% in 2024 to 5.94% in 2025.
Male-only founding teams still attracted $172.35 million, or 69.42% of all disclosed capital, while mixed-gender teams received $61.17 million, or 24.64%.
The 2025 research is based on data voluntarily supplied by 23 investment funds and captures 241 investments across 155 companies.
Jenny Rudd, co-founder of the Gender Investment Gap initiative and founder of tech startup Dispute Buddy, told The Front Page women founders are treated differently, and it’s something she’s experienced firsthand.
She said Harvard Business Review research found founders are generally asked two types of questions: promotional ones that address things like growth and market size, and prevention ones that focus on risk, costs, and competition.
“Data also shows us preventative questions look like ... ‘How are you gonna keep your costs down? How are you gonna protect yourself against competition?’
“Promotional questions look like ... ‘What’s the market opportunity for this? What’s the biggest outcome that you could get?’ And data shows us that men get asked more promotional questions, and also, each additional promotional question that you get asked means you will receive more funding,” she said.
Rudd said women aren’t being prioritised and no one should be prioritising women either.
“But they are prioritising men, and they shouldn’t be. The data shows us that men-only teams underperform compared to women-only founder teams.
“I think it’s worth remembering that inside all of us is a huge amount of bias, and we might not like to admit it, but it drives a lot of our decision-making.
“So when you have newspapers full of teams of three dudes raising $2 million seed rounds, it unconsciously tells us that’s who runs successful businesses. We don’t actually break it apart and say, ‘Well hang on, if that’s all we’re funding, then that’s the only people that are ever gonna be successful’.
“I think that a good investor or someone who genuinely wants to invest in companies that are gonna have a fantastic return needs to direct a lot of their attention internally in their business towards attracting women,” she said.
The 2025 data also raises questions about what happens to women-founded businesses as they move through the investment cycle.
Women-only teams accounted for 17.6% of pre-seed investments and 15% of seed investments.
That representation dropped to 7.5% at bridge stage, while none of the Series investments captured in the 2025 dataset went to a women-only founding team.
Dame Theresa Gattung, co-founder of the Gender Investment Gap initiative, said women are clearly founding businesses, raising early capital, and demonstrating investors will back them.
“But what happens when those businesses need larger amounts of capital to scale?
“The challenge is making sure strong female-founded businesses can continue to attract capital as they grow and need larger investment rounds.”
Gattung says the issue is not about directing investment towards businesses simply because women founded them.
“This is not about women asking for special treatment or investors lowering the bar. Capital should follow the best ideas, the best businesses, and the founders most capable of building them.
“It is about asking whether we are seeing the full field of opportunity. New Zealand needs productive businesses, innovation, and economic growth. We cannot afford to overlook potentially great companies because their founders do not fit the traditional investment profile.”
Listen to the full episode to hear more about:
- Bias in pitch meetings.
- Investor behaviour.
- Why split by gender?
- Is this PC gone mad?
The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the NZ Herald , available every weekday from 5pm. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.
You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
