Gendered Challenges in the FemTech Landscape: An Exploration of Funding Inequities and Communication Strategies in Female Entrepreneurship

Abstract

The present study zooms into the FemTech sector, an emerging field dedicated to addressing women's health issues. The FemTech sphere mirrors the gender-specific funding challenges observed in the broader tech landscape, in which female-only founder teams receive less financing than their male or mixed-team counterparts. Thus, this master’s thesis explores the challenges faced by female entrepreneurs in acquiring funding for their venture, either through collecting capital from investors or employing alternative funding methods, while also examining the communication strategies used to tackle said challenges. Drawing on the gender role congruity theory, the study investigates the gender biases encountered by female leaders occupying a traditionally masculine position, namely entrepreneurship. Furthermore, Men et al.’s (2018) framework on communication strategies informs the study by zooming into visionary communication as a main approach employed by founders. The research design incorporates in-depth interviews with FemTech entrepreneurs, employing thematic analysis to inspect the collected data. The findings revealed pervasive gender biases and a mismatch between FemTech business models and VC expectations in the investment ecosystem, affecting female entrepreneurs’ interactions with investors and hindering their access to funding. Successful communication strategies employed by female founders involved conveying enthusiasm, charisma, and a compelling vision, along with transparent communication, personalized pitches, and substantiation of claims through market research and customer testimonials, facilitating trust-building and long-term stakeholder engagement. Ultimately, from a socioeconomic standpoint, the research contributes towards narrowing the gender gap in European startup financing, while also filling the research gap in the field of communication by applying a gendered perspective to the topic and exclusively focusing on the Swedish startup environment.