Shoosmiths wants to play a part in ensuring greater gender equality for entrepreneurs and female-founded businesses, which is recognised through its spHERe network. The network supports female founders and venture capitalists within the venture capital (VC) space.
spHERe’s goal is to help women be successful through creating a forum for meaningful networking opportunities, helping to address the disparities that exist between female and male entrepreneurs.
In 2024, the firm sponsored Pitchbook’s report European All In: Female Founders in the VC Ecosystem. Its findings showed that less than a quarter of European deal value went to female-founded companies in 2023. Head of Shoosmiths’ spHERe network Helen Burnell contributed discussion around bridging the gender gulf, the causes of the lack of funding allocation for female founders and efforts needed to bridge the gap.
Alongside its spHERe network, Shoosmiths is also a proud supporter of The Gender Index (TGI). TGI was established to create a benchmark for the current level of activity undertaken by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across the UK that are owned and led by female founders. Created by UK company data platform mnAI, it uses varied sources of data to establish an inclusive, accessible, and detailed annual research study of gender-disaggregated data of the UK’s SMEs.
This work aims to identify the gender gap between male and female founders and shed light on the economic considerations and impact of female-owned and led businesses on a local and national basis. Its latest reports can be viewed here.
Through supporting TGI, Shoosmiths hopes to play its part in building a more detailed picture of where there are gender gaps and improve the quality of data and analysis available to ensure greater gender equality in the SME space.
Helen Burnell, corporate partner and head of Shoosmiths’ spHERe network, said: “I first launched spHERe in a bid to ‘join the dots’ and for us to play our part in building vital networks for female venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. We have since created unique networking opportunities to help address wider disparities across the UK to help close the complex barriers.”
