探花直播

In light of聽 to fulfil its funding promise to its Women in Innovation awards programme following a social media backlash,聽 talks about the challenges facing women entrepreneurs.

to reduce the funding given out to the聽Women in Innovation聽awards programme has聽been聽fortunately reversed, but only after an outcry from the business community. Yet there is a growing evidence base demonstrating the high value contributions women make as employees, entrepreneurs and researchers. For instance the聽 found that 'companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on executive teams were 25 percent more likely to have above-average profitability than companies in the fourth quartile.'

Women can not only help to boost profits, but they can also provide different views to help make our cities safer and better places for us all to live and work. The global consultancy聽Arup, who 探花直播 recently collaborated with in creating the , carried out a fascinating study called '' which showed how our cityscapes could be transformed by taking women's views into account.

Yet female founders still attract far less investment than male founders, with聽聽 At 探花直播, we understand how much drive and entrepreneurial acumen women bring. Both BCU鈥檚 student entrepreneurship training and聽 incubator for start-ups regularly support female founders.

At the 2024 Summer Student Entrepreneurship Awards, 8 of the 16 projects (50%) which received an award were started by women. 聽As the number of IUK applicants demonstrates (1452 applications for 50 grants), there is no shortage of entrepreneurial women. There is only a shortage of funding.

"Let鈥檚 make sure all of us in Innovation Support roles work together to support great founders from every gender and background."

聽is聽Head of Partnerships in Employment, Enterprise and Innovation at 探花直播. Find out more about聽BCU Business Services.