Paris (AFP)
Start-ups founded by women receive on average 2.5 times less funds than those founded by men, according to a report from the large international consulting group Boston Consulting Group.
The study was conducted in collaboration with Sista, a group of women entrepreneurs and investors that promotes more investment in women-led businesses.
In total, since 2008, start-ups founded by women have raised only 2% of the total amount raised by start-ups, according to the study.
"Male" start-ups, founded by men, raised 89% of the funding.
The rest was awarded to mixed companies, where women are among the founders, according to the same source.
When defending their funding files, founding women find very few women in the investment funds who have the keys to the safe.
"Of the major investment funds, more than half do not have any women among their + partners +," said the BCG.
Faced with this situation, Sista is in the process of completing a charter of best practices for investment funds, in an attempt to reverse the trend of underinvestment for women's projects.
The charter "has already been signed by thirty French funds and will be presented on September 24 in Bercy," said Valentine de Lasteyrie, general secretary of Sista, and herself a partner of the Fiblac fund.
"This is a good practice toolkit to overcome the unconscious bias" that disadvantage women, and that are present in everyone, man or woman, she explained.
For example, during project presentations to investment funds, they ask "always men to present their scenarios of success, and always women to talk about the risks of failure," she observed .
The situation is better for women in the UK, another big European start-up ground, where young women's shoots receive "only" 1.3 times less funds than men.
But it is worse in Germany, where the multiple climbs to 3.5.
"At the current rate, it will be necessary to wait until 2090 in France, 2067 in the United Kingdom and 2139 in Germany to reach the parity", note the study of the BCG.
© 2019 AFP