Levelling the Field
Expanding Access to Venture Capital for Women and Gender-diverse Entrepreneurs
Advancing women's equality in Canada could add $150 billion to the GDP by 2026. Closing the gender funding gap could contribute to this opportunity.
Women and gender-diverse entrepreneurs remain severely underfunded in Canada’s venture capital ecosystem.
Despite driving innovation, job creation, and economic growth, women and gender-diverse entrepreneurs receive only 4% of venture capital (Government of Canada, 2022).
2% of the total venture capital in the U.S. went to women entrepreneurs in 2021 (Teare, 2024).
Black female startup founders secured just 0.34% of the total venture capital in the U.S. in 2021 (Kunthara, 2021).
Canada’s economy cannot afford to ignore this gap.
Investing in gender-diverse leadership is a business advantage.
Companies with women on their boards raise 16% more funding than those without (Shepherd, 2023).
Gender-diverse executive teams are 25% more likely to outperform their peers (Hunt et al., 2020).
Canada ranks among the top three countries globally for the proportion of women running firms with 20 or more employees, at 11.8% (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, 2023).
Canada’s venture capital ecosystem has a financial incentive to close this gap, ensuring that high-potential businesses receive the funding needed to succeed.
This opportunity aligns with the broader gender-lens investing (GLI) movement, which continues to gain traction across Canada and globally. GLI is the process of incorporating a gender analysis across the investment process and includes a focus of investing in women-owned or women-led enterprises.
As gender-lens investing grows across sectors and asset classes, Canada has a chance to lead by directing more capital toward women and gender-diverse entrepreneurs, unlocking both economic and impact-driven returns.
About us
New Power Labs (NPL) is an action-oriented think tank dedicated to expanding access to capital for underfunded and overlooked leaders and communities.
New Power Labs is a platform for leaders and organizations committed to advancing equity in capital flows across Canada. NPL works with foundations, investors, asset managers, credit unions and banks to help channel capital to historically underfunded and overlooked leaders and communities, unlocking the full potential of our country across diversities (gender, ethnicity, ability, neurodiversity, socioeconomic status, Indigenous identity, language minorities and others).
NPL is mobilizing funders, investors, lenders and asset managers in Canada to collectively move $500 million to under-resourced founders and groups by 2030. By challenging the conventional norms in philanthropy, investing, and across the capital spectrum,shifting policies and practices, system-wide change is possible.
The Women and Nonbinary (W) Impact (I) Network (N) for Venture Capital (VC) is a national collaborative of organizations working to provide services, programming, events, and dedicated resources to women and gender-diverse entrepreneurs and gender lens investors across Canada who are working towards becoming investment-ready and increasing the pool of investors driven to invest in these ventures. These organizations include: the Canadian Women’s Foundation, Esplanade, Pond-Deshpande Centre, Spring, SVX, and WeBC. This partnership is enabled through funding from the Government of Canada and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED), which supports initiatives that foster a more inclusive venture capital environment for women and gender-diverse founders.
