Where do women founders raise the most funding (and the least) in 2025?
From New York to Nairobi, funding outcomes for women differ wildly. Here’s why.
It’s one of tech’s worst-kept secrets: women founders raise far less money than men. But what’s often missed is how geography changes the story. In 2025, venture capital (VC) is roaring back after two quiet years, yet women are still being left behind, and where you build your company might decide whether you get a fighting chance.
Globally, female-only founding teams secured just $6.7 billion across 580 deals in 2024—a sliver of the $289 billion poured into startups that year (via PitchBook).
All-male teams took home more than $240 billion across 16,000 deals. Women represented 6.4% of deals but only 2.3% of capital. You don’t need to be a founder to feel the imbalance in those numbers; you only need to imagine what it means for ideas that never get the oxygen they need.
There's abundance in the U.S. and Europe, but no inclusion
The US and Europe dominate the global VC space. The money is there, oceans of it, but access isn’t. In the US, women-only teams got just 2% of venture dollars last year. Even in New York, where ecosystems are supposedly more inclusive, it barely scraped 3.1%. Europe looks no better: the UK sat at 3.2%, France at 3.9%, while Germany dropped to a dismal 1.9% (via Founders Forum Group).
It’s not because women are building weaker companies, in fact, studies show female-led startups deliver 35% higher return on investment (ROI) when funded. It’s because these markets run on closed networks. More than 80% of VC deals happen through warm introductions, and women remain on the outside. If you’ve ever tried to enter a room where no one thinks you belong, you’ll understand why the percentages stay stuck.
Africa and Latin America have smaller pools but slightly fairer odds
Now look at Africa and Latin America. By August 2025, African startups had raised over $2 billion across about 500 deals (via Briter Intelligence). Just 10% of that went to startups with a female founder, but proportionally, some countries perform better than Europe or the US.
Kenya funneled 7.9% of VC dollars to women-only teams, Nigeria 5.3%, South Africa around 4%. The absolute dollars are small, in 2024, women CEOs raised only $48 million versus men’s $2.2 billion, but a woman founder in Nairobi sometimes has better odds than one in Berlin.
Latin America tells a similar story. Startups raised $3.6 billion across 694 deals in 2024 (via Startuplinks). Within that, Colombia directed 5.7% to women-only teams, Mexico 4.5%, while Brazil lagged at 3.3%. Again, the checks aren’t massive, Colombia’s entire market was about $1.5 billion, but the openness of newer ecosystems, combined with impact investors’ presence, can tilt the odds slightly in women’s favor.
Asia and MENA are an uneven playground
Meanwhile, Asia is pretty much uneven. India’s booming startup scene raised $12.5 billion in 2024, yet women-only teams saw just 2.6% of that. China, boosted by state-backed diversity programs, reached 3.5%, while Singapore and Indonesia landed at 3.2% and 2.8%. In the Middle East and North Africa, the gap is widest: women secured barely 1.2% of total VC (via AGBI), despite the surge of new funds across the region.
Emmanuel Oyedeji
The disparities we're seeing in all these regions come down to who you know, what you’re building, and who’s writing the checks. Mature markets like Silicon Valley or Berlin reward those already inside the network; women, with less access, are locked out.
Sector bias plays its part too: men dominate fintech and AI, the darlings of venture capital, while women are overrepresented in edtech and healthtech, which attract smaller rounds. And when investment committees are all-male, the cycle repeats. PitchBook data shows firms with at least 30% female partners invest 4.7× more in women-led startups. We need more women in these spaces.
The lesson
So where are women raising the most? In absolute dollars, still the US and Europe, because that’s where the money is. But in relative terms, it’s often Nairobi, Bogotá, or Mexico City that give women a slightly fairer chance. Where are they raising the least? Germany, Brazil, India, and much of MENA, where the numbers fall below 3% and sometimes barely register at all.
And the why? Because capital follows geography before it follows ideas. Until networks are opened, sectors are rebalanced, and more women sit in decision-making seats, female founders will keep scaling walls their male peers don’t even see. We might tell ourselves that talent is borderless, but in venture capital, borders still decide whose ideas get to grow.
