Women entrepreneurs are not just creating businesses—they are building pathways to inclusive economic growth, job creation, and community development. When more women start and lead enterprises, GDP rises, families gain financial security, and younger generations see new possibilities.

According to McKinsey Global Institute, advancing gender equality in the workforce could add $12 trillion to global GDP by 2025. In India alone, increasing women’s participation in the economy could boost GDP by nearly 27% making it one of the most significant growth levers towards becoming a stronger, prosperous economy and increasing per capita income levels.

Yet, despite their potential and growing numbers, women entrepreneurs remain underrepresented and underserved across funding, opportunity, and decision-making platforms. The barriers they face are not a reflection of their abilities but of persistent structural, financial, and cultural inequities. Understanding these challenges—and addressing them with targeted, systemic solutions—is not just about fairness. It’s about building a better and bigger economy for everyone.

Here are five enduring challenges faced by women entrepreneurs—and what it will take to solve them from my observations across my decade-and-a-half-long entrepreneurial journey.

1. Limited Access to Capital

Despite strong performance metrics, women-led businesses receive only a fraction of available funding. A 2023 PitchBook report shows that just 2.1% of global venture capital went to all-women founding teams. In India, that number drops below 1%, even as women-led startups have demonstrated higher returns on equity and stronger capital efficiency.

This is an area where we do not follow data despite more of it being presented to us.
The funding gap extends to credit access. The World Bank estimates that nearly 70% of women-owned MSMEs in developing countries are unserved or underserved by formal financial institutions. Without adequate capital, women-led enterprises struggle to scale, innovate, or withstand economic shocks highlighting that it is harder to be a women entrepreneur.

How to Address It

•    Redesign Financial Products: Traditional lending models often fail women due to lack of collateral or lack of data. Some even require a male family member's 'no-objection' when a woman takes a loan. Institutions/lenders need to develop alternative underwriting models and flexible credit products tailored to the needs of women-run businesses.

•    Diversify Decision-Makers: Investment committees, credit boards, and funding panels need more gender diversity. Diverse perspectives reduce bias and broaden the definition of a “fundable” business/entrepreneur.

•    Promote Alternative Capital Models: Peer-to-peer lending, revenue-based financing, and crowdfunding—especially platforms that use data-driven decisioning—can offer more equitable capital access.

2. Unequal Burden of Care Responsibilities

Globally, women perform over 75% of unpaid care work. In India, women spend nearly six hours a day on domestic chores, compared to just under one hour for men (NSSO, 2019). This chronic time deficit significantly limits the bandwidth available for entrepreneurial pursuits—often pushing women into part-time or home-based ventures.

Caregiving duties are not only time-consuming: they influence how society perceives women’s business ambitions. The expectation to “prioritize family first” persists across geographies and social strata, shaping both internalised guilt and external doubt. As many experts have stated, in the case of Indian women, we are expected to be in the 21st century at work but the 19th century at home.

How to Address It:

•    Normalize Shared Responsibilities: Right from planning groceries to child-care, as organisations and families, we must encourage sharing of responsibilities amongst men and women. This change requires all of us to look inwards across our personal and professional selves. Do we give more household chores to our daughters? Do we tend to give women team members certain types of office tasks only etc. This actual introspection and sharing of shared work can go a very long way.

•    Design Flexible Ecosystems: Co-working spaces with childcare, formal household support, and group transport services can reduce the logistical load.

•    Use Technology to Reduce Manual Work: Digital tools for bookkeeping, customer management, and operations allow entrepreneurs to scale without scaling time commitment. These technologies need not necessarily be gender-focused but need wider adoption.

3. Limited Access to Mainstream Networks

Access to networks of mentors, investors, and peers is critical as it enables all other solutions suggested here and more. Yet, women continue to be underrepresented in mixed-gender, high-impact networks. Women-only groups, while well-intentioned, have seen mixed results. They often provide peer support but lack the strategic connections and capital flow that established, male-dominated networks command.
In sectors like tech and finance, informal networks—the proverbial "old boys’ clubs"—still dominate decision-making and dealmaking. Without access to these spaces, women entrepreneurs are often left out of key opportunities.

How to Address It:

•    Push for Participation Parity: Institutions must actively track and promote gender balance across accelerators, angel syndicates, pitch events, and advisory boards—not through tokenism but through structured inclusion.

•    Incentivize Mixed-Gender Mentorship: Programs that pair women founders with established leaders across genders foster more authentic, high-value connections. Pairing male founders with women leaders can also help foster greater parity.

•    Redesign Networking Norms: Moving away from late-night or bar-centric networking formats to inclusive, professional, and time-sensitive alternatives can help women participate meaningfully without added strain while also allowing men to participate in shared responsibilities.

4. Persistent Gender Bias and Stereotypes

Gender bias in entrepreneurship is subtle but pervasive. Investors tend to ask male founders “promotion” questions about potential, while women are asked “prevention” questions about risk and fallback plans. These biases contribute to disproportionately lower funding outcomes and fewer opportunities. At some level, all of us are perpetrators and victims of these biases.

Bias also manifests in the language used around women-led businesses: they are called “lifestyle ventures” or “side hustles,” even when financially successful. Leadership traits like decisiveness and ambition are praised in men but penalised in women; this further creates more challenges for women in leadership positions as many find it difficult to make female bosses as seriously as male bosses.

How to Address It:

•    Train Funders and Evaluators on Bias: Formal training on gender lens investing, structured pitch evaluation criteria, and data-based assessments can reduce the impact of bias.

•    Strive for Gender Representation in Gatekeeping Roles: Regulatory and industry bodies should set minimum threshold guidelines for gender diversity in investment and evaluation committees. I am using the term guidelines here as any forced representation or poorly timed mandates are likely to be ineffective and even burdensome.

•    Shift the Narrative: Publicly celebrating women’s business wins as business wins and not as 'women's business wins'—across scale, sector, and region—helps redefine leadership norms and challenge deep-seated stereotypes.

5. Underplaying Achievements and Self-Promotion

Social conditioning often teaches us women to equate humility with professionalism. As a result, many women founders understate their achievements—missing out on critical investor attention, media coverage, etc. This contributes to a cycle of invisibility, where women’s contributions are systematically overlooked in the broader business landscape. The limited visibility achieved tends to be in the 'women entrepreneur category' which further sidelines women.

A study by the University of California found that women who actively self-promote face likability penalties, while men are rewarded for the same behaviour—creating a double bind.

How to Address It:

•    Make Visibility a Strategic Priority: Founders must treat media engagement, award nominations, and social proof as growth levers, not vanity metrics.

•    Use Communication Allies: Support from PR professionals, mentors, and team members can amplify achievements without forcing women to constantly self-advocate.

•    Evolve Cultural Norms Around Confidence: Investors, accelerators, and educational programs must value substance over style—ensuring that quieter forms of leadership are recognised and rewarded.

And one last thing, please stop asking women entrepreneurs how they balance professional and personal responsibilities and instead ask how their business is solving real-world problems, what bold bets they’re making, and what support systems are needed to help more entrepreneurs thrive—regardless of gender.

(The writer is CEO & Co-Founder, IndiaP2P. Views expressed here are personal)