While the majority of climate investors chase the same male-dominated startups as everyone else, women-led climate ventures are quietly delivering 63 percent better ROI. Indeed, I believe that the biggest thing holding back climate finance isn't technology or policy — it's investors’ inability to see her ideas.
After two decades leading marketing teams that told corporate stories around diversity, then sustainability, the least surprising finding of my career has been how these issues intersect. What has surprised me is the massive competitive advantage waiting for investors smart enough to approach climate finance with a more inclusive strategy.
This isn't an ESG nice-to-have. It's a performance imperative hiding in plain sight.
Traversing the venture capital desert
My path from leading Working Mother's Best Companies initiative to Meta's sustainability strategy to carbon markets gave me a front-row seat to both worlds. That's when my old nemesis — gender inequity — tapped me on the shoulder once again. I was shocked (but honestly, not surprised) to find that women leading climate projects still aren't attracting the same investment dollars as men, despite their superior performance.
The numbers tell a stark story:
Across all U.S. venture capital investments, women receive just 1 percent of all funding, with even less going (.39 percent) to women of color.
In the US, female-founded climate tech companies received just 0.4 percent of the $34 billion invested in 2024. (Even including mixed-gender teams, companies with female founders receive only 7.7 percent of US climate tech funding.)
And globally, just 10 percent of investment flows to women-led climate tech companies.
It’s not just venture capital that is missing out. When it comes to blended finance — which combines public, private, and philanthropic funds — out of more than 550 climate deals tracked across these markets, only 22 percent were gender-responsive in 2024. (This is actually lower than the full blended finance market, where 31 percent of deals include gender considerations.)
The opportunity hiding in plain sight
Here's where the data gets interesting — and where the business case becomes undeniable. Study after study finds that women excel as founders, demonstrating greater resilience and delivering superior returns:
Female-founded startups deliver higher returns than male-founded companies (First Round Capital, for one, reported 63 percent better returns over 10 years.)
Women-led small- and medium-sized businesses have consistently lower non-performing loans, according to the International Finance Corporation.
Add climate to the equation and the performance gap widens even further:
Companies with gender-diverse boards are 60 percent more likely to reduce energy consumption and 39 percent more likely to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
After the Paris Agreement, firms with greater gender diversity at the management level reduced their CO₂ emissions 5 percent more than male-dominated firms.
And pilot studies have found that companies hiring more women in clean energy sales saw gains of up to 85 percent.
But it’s across the broader community where the results truly multiply.
Women are frequently at the forefront of community-based climate resilience efforts, leading initiatives in sustainable agriculture, water management and disaster response. This makes their inclusion crucial for the long-term viability of climate investments. They reinvest earnings back into families and communities at significantly higher rates — up to 90 percent compared to up to 40 percent for men — creating multiplier effects that extend far beyond the initial investment.
Gender-diverse teams are also proven to solve problems differently, bringing access to underserved markets and user insights that homogeneous teams miss entirely. In a sector desperately needing innovation at scale, we're voluntarily limiting our creative capacity. While you're competing for the same overvalued male-led deals, women founders are building the next generation of climate solutions with less competition for capital.
This isn't just about fairness. It's about effectiveness. We're missing breakthrough innovations, community insights and risk management capabilities that will accelerate our path to net zero.
Today, sustainability communications teams have pivoted hard to emphasize the business case for their work (which, truthfully, has always been business-minded). Diversity teams have also fought this battle, pointing to the costs of turnover, the power of diversity teams and the potential for new markets.
Why add gender into your climate investment considerations? Because the research on performance data, risk management and innovation outcomes shows that it works. Every day you're not tracking gender diversity in your pipeline is another day your competitors could be gaining this edge.
The question that changes everything
It's a simple question that could more than double both the impact and innovation of climate investing: How many women are leading the climate projects in your portfolio?
The answer is clear: Invest in women. It's good for the planet, good for the economy and good for placing long-term wellbeing at the center of the work we do.
Next up: How to answer this simple question — and transform your climate investment portfolio.
Read the full Gender + Climate Finance series here.
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Jennifer Owens is a marketing leader with 14 years of experience, including the past five years focused on sustainability, climate tech and carbon markets. She co-hosts the Engaging ESG podcast with Kati Kallins, global sustainability lead, Adobe. Learn more at Jennwork.