Recommendation 8

Innovate UK provides an essential funding stream for mainly male entrepreneurs. Women who seek to access funding from it report their projects being undervalued and subject to biased investment decisions from majority male assessment panels. Match funding requirements exclude women who already struggle to access investment while application processes are onerous. Innovate UK’s decision to allocate only half of the available funding from the Women in Innovation programme was extraordinary and suggestive of a much deeper problem in which women are treated as a second order priority by the UK’s research establishment. (Conclusion, Paragraph 47)