Earlier this month, on September 18, the world marked International Equal Pay Day, a United Nations observance dedicated to the principle of equal pay for work of equal value. It is a date that often gets framed around employees and employers. For founders, it deserves just as much attention.
According to UN Women, women worldwide still earn, on average, 20 percent less than men. The organization also notes that the gap can be even wider for women from racial and ethnic minorities, women with disabilities, and migrant women. These numbers describe more than a difference in paychecks. They describe differences in savings, in personal capital, and in how much risk a person can absorb while building something new. For many women, the money that funds a first prototype, a first hire, or a few months without revenue comes from their own pockets. When earnings are lower, that starting point is lower too.
From pay gap to funding gap
Entrepreneurship is often described as a path around workplace inequality. In practice, the same patterns tend to reappear. Founders who start with less personal capital need outside capital sooner, and outside capital has historically flowed unevenly.
This is the reality that Digitalundivided set out to measure with Project Diane. Launched in 2016, it was the first research study to examine how much investor funding was reaching Black women founders. The early findings were stark. Fewer than a dozen Black women had raised more than $1 million in venture capital, and only 0.2 percent of venture deals between 2012 and 2014 had gone to Black women founders.
Project Diane became a biennial study, and its scope grew to include Latina women founders. The 2018 edition found that 34 Black women had raised more than $1 million, up from 11 two years earlier, while the median amount raised by Black women founders was still $0. By the 2022 edition, the picture had shifted in a meaningful way. In 2021, Latina and Black women founders brought their combined share of venture capital above 1 percent for the first time. That share dipped in 2022 alongside the broader venture market, but it remained the second-biggest year for funding to women of color.
The trajectory shows two things at once. Progress is real, and it is still small relative to the size of the opportunity. Data like this matters because it gives founders, investors, and funders a shared starting point for decisions, and it makes it harder for a funding gap to go unnoticed.
What comes next
Project Diane has always been about more than counting. It is meant to inform how capital, programs, and policies can respond to what founders actually experience. We are preparing what comes next for the report, and more news is on the way. Stay close to our channels to be among the first to see it.
Lift While We Climb
Numbers explain the problem. Closing the gap takes people and resources. That is the idea behind Lift While We Climb, our community-powered effort to expand access for women founders. Support can take different forms, and each one matters. You can share your knowledge with a founder navigating a stage you know well. You can open your network to someone who does not yet have access to the right rooms. Or you can contribute financially, helping fund the businesses of the women building in our community.
Equal pay is ultimately about recognizing value. For founders, that recognition often arrives as access: to advice, to relationships, and to capital. If you are in a position to contribute, we invite you to join the Circle and invest in what's next.