Why MENA Female-Founded Startups Still Struggle to Access Capital | Fortune

But despite the progress that has been made, female foundersremainwoefully underrepresented in accessing capital.

MENA’s startup ecosystem attracted $1.7 billion inVCfunding across 242 rounds inthe first half of2026, according to tech acceleratorWamda.

However, female-founded startupssecured only$2.5 millionor 0.14%ofthis fundingtotal, compared with$1.6 billion raised by male-founded startups across 213 deals.

This fundingdisparity is far from a one-off.

Aggregate data compiled byWamdashows thatmixed-gender founding teams and female-founded startups accounted forroughly lessthan 4% of total equity transactions deployed across the GCC between 2019 to 2025.

This isdespite morefemaleentrepreneursestablishing businesses in the region.

According to a 2025Global Entrepreneur Surveyconducted by GoDaddy, the U.S.-headquarteredinternet domain registrycompany,51% of surveyed small businesses in MENA are owned by women,with 63% of them founded in the past five years. 

Abu Dhabi alone recorded 3,058 new business licenses issued to Emirati women in the first half of 2026,highlighting the growing role of women entrepreneurs in the emirate’s economy.

It begs the question:if more women across the region are starting companies, why hasn’t their share of the funding pie grown at the same pace?

According toLucy Chow, alimitedpartner at U.K.-based Pact VC whose investment remit extends to MENA, part of the problem stems from the lack of diversity at the investor level.

“Gulf investor networks are still very male-dominated, especially at decision-making levels,”said Chow, whoalso worksas secretary generalin the UAE office of theWorld Business Angels Investment Forum.

“That matters because deal flow follows networks.I’vebeen saying for years that we need more female check writers, but menhave tohelp solve this too, by actively backing deserving female founders.”

It’sa view that issharedbyBasil Moftah, managing partner at Key Capital, a Dubai-based VC secondaries asset manager.

“Undoubtedly, the VC industry—both regionally and globally—is dominated by male general partners or has a majority of male GPs,” said Moftah.

“While most people would tell youthey’renot biased, surely there is a bias in there.It’shard to ignore that and the impact it has on funding outcomes.”

Data published by Founders Forum Group, a U.K.-headquarteredgroup of businesses supporting entrepreneurs around the world, shows thatVC firms with at least one female partner are 2.3 times more likely to invest in female founders,while VC firms where women make up at least 30% of partners invest 4.7 times more in female-founded companies than all-male firms.

Female angel investorsallocateapproximately 35% of their investments to female founders versus 13% for male angels.

Chow said that female startupsstill rely heavily on bootstrapping to try to plug the gap.

“My experience with a lot of female founders is that they bootstrap,” she explained.

“They areleveragingalternative personal income streams to self-fund.Founders are resourceful and patch together funding, but non-traditional capitalwon’treplace VC when it comes to scaling.”

She referenced a Mastercard study published last yearthatshowed56% of women entrepreneurs in the UAE run a side hustle,to achieve financial independence and bankroll early business concepts.

Some regional industry experts have called for Gulf governments to introduce mandates for gender equity in startup funding in order to address the imbalance.

Chow believes the region needs to builda pipeline of female investors.

“We absolutely have to treat this as a capital allocation problem, not just a founder problem,” she said.

“That means more women angels, limited partners, and investment committee seats, but also more female investors in the room, and government measures that encourage capital to flow, not just quotas.”

The lack of major exits inregional female startups hascreateda familiar catch-22: investors need success stories to unlock capital, but capital is needed to create those success stories.

According toChow, the funding imbalance has also ledto aheavyreliance on public innovation grants from entitiessuch asDubai SMEandAbu Dhabi’sKhalifa Fundfor Enterprise Development to survive bridge periods between equity VC rounds.

It has also led women to take matters into their own hands,as Sophie Smith, founder and CEO ofUAE-basedNabtaHealth,the first dedicated platform for women’s preventive healthcarein MENA, explained.

“When we started raising our Seed round in 2021, we set up aspecial purpose vehicleso that we could accept smaller tickets of $1,000or morefrom angel investors,” said Smith.

“I was looking for female angel investors on publicly availablelistsand,out offrustration, I set up2022 Female Angels with agroup of friends to identify and publicly list 2,022 female angel investorsacrossthe region.”

Today, the team hosts workshops and bootcamps to upskill and enable women to become angelinvestors, andmanages a list ofaround350 active angel investors,with 44ofits 79angel investorsbeingfemale.

Last November,NabtaHealth closed a $2 million pre-Series A funding round, bringing its total funding to $4.5 million.

Other initiatives such as Women Spark,founded in Saudi Arabia by DeemahAlYahya, focus heavily on training, mentoring, and facilitating angel investments into female tech innovators.

While such efforts are encouraging,they are unlikely to move the dial on the scalerequiredfortheGulf’s femalestartup ecosystemtostartreachingits full potential.

“I have been one of those vocal individuals stating that we need governments to step up and to seed funds targeted specifically at female founders,” said Chow.

“Concurrently, wealth funds and family offices can also do their part byallocatingaportion,however small,to funding female-led startups.”

As the GCC presses ahead withpursuingeconomic diversification, the region can ill afford to leave a growing pool of female entrepreneurs on the sidelines. The challenge is no longer getting more women to start companies—it is ensuring they have a fair shot at the capital needed to scale them.

That will require more than training programs and individual initiatives.Key players acrossvarious areas of the economywill need toexercisea more active role in widening the investor pipeline and directing capital toward female-led businesses.