Framework · 2024
Jody R. Weiss, Founder — Women's Funding Council, Co-Founder
Abstract
This framework establishes the foundational principles, strategic architecture, and operational roadmap of the Women's Funding Council — a global coalition dedicated to systematically redirecting capital flows toward women-led enterprises and initiatives. It articulates the moral, economic, and ecological case for gender-equitable investment and presents a ten-year plan to move 10% of global venture capital — approximately $40 billion — into the hands of women founders by 2037.
Capital, at its root, is not merely financial. It is an expression of what a society values, what it chooses to sustain, and whose visions it deems worthy of becoming reality. For too long, the architecture of global capital has been built on a narrow foundation — one that systematically excludes the creativity, leadership, and market insight of women.
Women represent 51% of the global population, drive 70–80% of all consumer purchasing decisions, and found businesses at a rate equal to or exceeding men in many markets. Yet they receive less than 2% of global venture capital. This is not a pipeline problem. It is a structural failure — embedded in networks, norms, evaluation criteria, and institutional inertia that compound over time.
The Women's Funding Council (WFC) was established on the understanding that this gap cannot be closed incrementally. It requires coordinated, systemic intervention — a deliberate redirection of capital at scale, backed by research, coalition, and committed institutional actors.
The WFC's philosophy is grounded in the African concept of Ubuntu — the understanding that individual flourishing is inseparable from collective wellbeing. Applied to capital, this means that a financial system in which half of humanity is systemically excluded from ownership and investment cannot be truly healthy, innovative, or sustainable.
When women control more capital, families are better nourished, communities are more resilient, environments are better stewarded, and economies grow more robustly. The research is unambiguous: gender-diverse investment portfolios outperform homogeneous ones. Women-led businesses generate 10% more revenue over five years and are 25% more likely to generate a profitable exit.
Redirecting capital to women is not charity. It is intelligent systems design.
The Women's Funding Council operates through three interlocking pillars:
The WFC commissions and curates rigorous, peer-reviewed research that quantifies the funding gap, maps its structural causes, and identifies leverage points for systemic change. White papers, feasibility studies, and co-creative academic partnerships with institutions such as Parsons School of Design's Elab form the evidentiary backbone of our advocacy and strategy.
Change at scale requires actors across every sector to align around a shared goal. The WFC convenes venture capitalists, private equity firms, family offices, institutional endowments, government bodies, academic institutions, and philanthropy — creating a coalition of committed capital partners who pledge measurable allocations to women-led funds and founders.
Vision without implementation is aspiration. The WFC develops concrete, time-bound feasibility roadmaps — detailing how specific institutions can re-orient their capital allocation practices, LP relationships, and internal evaluation frameworks to systematically increase investment in women. These roadmaps are designed to be actionable within existing fiduciary constraints.
The WFC's central quantitative commitment is to facilitate the movement of 10% of global venture capital to women-founded or women-led enterprises over a ten-year horizon (2024–2037). Based on current total VC deployment of approximately $400 billion annually, this represents a reallocation of $40 billion per year — or $400 billion cumulative — into women-led innovation.
This goal is achieved not through a single mechanism but through a coordinated portfolio of interventions: LP pressure on fund managers, dedicated diverse fund commitments, policy advocacy for institutional mandates, and the cultivation of a new generation of women fund managers who deploy capital with a gender lens.
$400B
Annual global VC deployed
10%
Target reallocation to women
$40B/yr
New annual capital to women-led ventures
Structural change in capital allocation requires action at multiple levels simultaneously. The WFC framework identifies six primary mechanisms for redirecting capital flows:
The Women's Funding Council's work is ultimately motivated by a vision that extends beyond finance. We operate from the conviction that the planet's capacity for regeneration — ecological, social, economic — is intimately connected to the degree to which women hold decision-making power over resources.
When women invest, they reinvest 90 cents of every dollar earned back into their families and communities, compared to 35 cents for men. Women-led companies are more likely to prioritize employee wellbeing, environmental stewardship, and long-term value creation over short-term extraction. The economic case for women's capital leadership is, simultaneously, the ecological and social case.
This is not a zero-sum proposition. Redirecting capital to women does not diminish the returns available to existing investors — it expands the total pool of innovation, wealth creation, and human flourishing. A financial system that fully includes women is simply a better-functioning system. That is the world Women Funding the World is building.
Author
Women Funding the World
Jody R. Weiss, Founder
+ Women's Funding Council, Co-Founder
Co-Founder
Jody works at the intersection of nature, consciousness, and capital. She is the Founder of Women Funding the World and Co-Creator of the Women's Funding Council. She is an Operating Partner with Chloe Capital and the Co-Founder of the podcast, Exploring Reality, Maybe. Her core work is focused on our indivisibility and the understanding that when equity is achieved and living systems thrive, the planet will be in a regenerative state.