The Aurora Tech Award Funding Gap Report is one of the most comprehensive pieces of research available on the structural barriers preventing female tech founders in emerging markets from accessing venture capital. Drawing on insights from hundreds of founders across more than a hundred countries, the report identifies and analyzes the specific factors — spanning investor bias, network exclusion, due diligence processes, and market perception — that collectively create a funding environment deeply hostile to women-led technology companies. Aurora Tech Award produced this report not as an academic exercise but as a practical tool for change: to arm investors with the data they need to challenge their own assumptions, to give founders language and evidence with which to advocate for themselves, and to provide policymakers and ecosystem builders with a roadmap for structural reform. The report's findings are sobering — and energizing. They confirm what many female founders have long known from personal experience, while also revealing the sheer scale of the opportunity that investors are leaving on the table by systematically underfunding women-led companies. Aurora Tech Award uses the insights from the Funding Gap Report to continuously improve its own programs and to engage in advocacy that reaches beyond the competition itself. For anyone seeking to understand the state of gender equity in venture capital — and to act on that understanding — the Aurora Tech Award Funding Gap Report is an essential resource. Learn more about the challenges women founders face when raising startup capital There.