{"id":11419,"date":"2026-03-02T09:45:26","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T09:45:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=11419"},"modified":"2026-03-02T09:45:27","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T09:45:27","slug":"must-try-harder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=11419","title":{"rendered":"Must try harder"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Anu Adebajo\/LinkedIn<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

There are many all-party parliamentary groups or APPGs in the UK.   APPGs are informal cross-party groups of UK parliamentarians that discuss a particular issue of concern.  In 2022 there were 755 such groups, but fear not, we are only going to look at what one of them is saying \u2013 the Women and Work APPG.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last month the group published a report on women and work – and you\u2019ll never guess what it found: women-led businesses face \u2018structural and cultural barriers to accessing capital.\u2019  Who knew?  Sarah Russell, co-chair of the APPG, reported that in 2024, 2% of equity funding went to female entrepreneurs, down from 2.5% the year before. More than 80% went to all-male teams. Just 15% of investment committee members are women, according to the report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report was published the day after a landmark review of women on boards showed \u2018slow progress\u2019 on increasing the number of women in top executive positions at the UK\u2019s biggest companies.  The FTSE Women Leaders Review<\/em> found that women took up just 15.4% of executive director roles on the FTSE 350, compared to nearly half of non-executive director roles. There are just eight women CEOs on the FTSE 100, down from 10 in 2023. Can anyone please explain to me how such a reduction can be termed \u2018progress\u2019, however slow?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the figures above were stable, there would be less cause for concern, but the downward trend, however marginal, is of course concerning.  The APPG report has several proposals, including ensuring banks, venture capitalists and private investors track and report the genders of the founders whose business they finance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russell is reported as saying that \u2018This isn\u2019t just unfair \u2013 it\u2019s economically nonsensical.  If women started and scaled businesses at the same rate as men, the UK economy could see up to \u00a3250bn in new value. Reporting by gender shines a light on these gaps, holds investors accountable, and could unlock massive productivity gains.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The APPG is not the only Parliamentary body monitoring this issue; the Women and Equalities Committee – a select committee of the House of Commons \u2013 has produced a report highlighting the difficulties facing female-led businesses in accessing capital. This has prompted the government to indicate that it would intervene in the venture capital industry to increase the number of women-led businesses raising finance \u2018if the level of investment shows no sign of improvement\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, numbers and general data are one thing, but Anu Adebajo, the newly appointed CEO of Newton Venture Program has noted that this is only part of the challenge, saying \u2018Reporting initiatives need to be rolled out alongside incentives that change behaviours.\u2019  Her company provides education and training programmes for venture capitalists, so one hopes that her leadership skills will help effect these much-needed changes in business culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So there you have it:  \u2018Must try harder\u2019 is the standard comment at the end of a school report, and it certainly applies here.  If only there were more female CEOs in charge of the AI and tech companies to keep the \u2018bros\u2019 under control. And one final thought: could Zuckerberg’s toadying line about business needing more masculine energy have anything to do with it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Can anyone please explain to me how such a reduction can be termed \u2018progress\u2019, however slow?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,625,309,59],"tags":[76,93,97,82],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11419"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11419"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11433,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11419\/revisions\/11433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}