The government’s sixth Investing in Women Code annual progress report shows that signatories are more likely to back women founders than the wider market for the sixth consecutive year.
Launched in 2019, the Investing in Women Code is a commitment to support the advancement of women entrepreneurs in the UK by improving access to the tools, resources and finance required to help businesses scale.
The Code’s purpose is to build a clearer understanding of how women founders access finance, while encouraging signatories to adopt and share best practices that better support women-led businesses.
The report finds that Investing in Women Code signatories have delivered a higher proportion of venture capital deals to teams with at least one woman founder. In 2025, 33% of venture capital deals made by Code signatories had funded teams with at least one woman founder, compared with 25% across the wider market.
The proportion of funding going to women-led businesses is also increasing. In 2025, 32% of all venture capital investment from Code signatories went to teams with at least one woman founder, up from 27% in 2024.
Code signatories are more than twice as likely to fund businesses with a woman founder than the wider market, where 15% of total equity investment funded teams with at least one woman founder.
All-women founder teams received 6% of total investment value from Code signatories – up from 4% in 2023 – which is three times higher than the wider market share of just 2%.
More than 330 organisations are now signed up to the government-backed initiative, up from just 12 in 2019.
“For the sixth year in a row, Investing in Women Code signatories have outperformed the wider market, showing that backing female founders is good for business and good for growth,” says Blair McDougall, minister for Small Business and Economic Transformation.
“Yet women-led businesses still face greater barriers to funding and growth. That is why the Code matters – helping more women start, scale and succeed, while unlocking talent, creating jobs and strengthening the UK economy.”
While progress continues, the report shows that women-led businesses still receive a disproportionately small share of overall investment, highlighting the need for continued action across the funding ecosystem.
The government is helping address this through the Invest in Women taskforce, which has already deployed more than £70m from its £635m funding pool in its first year.
This builds on wider action to diversify the investment market, including through the British Business Bank’s £400m Investor Pathways Capital Initiative, designed to support emerging fund managers and widen access to investment opportunities.
