The report found that despite being the most credentialed cohort of founders, women-only teams remain systematically underpriced and pushed into a cycle of grant dependency that weakens the signal chain needed for growth-stage investment, the authors conclude.

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The power loop: How female leadership and women’s health reinforce each other

In a region celebrated for gender equality, the life science sector tells a different story: women dominate the workforce in many jobs yet remain sidelined in leadership, funding, and research – with consequences that ripple across public health and economic performance.

61% of women-only Nordic founders tracked in 2025 hold a Master’s degree or PhD, and for women in mixed-gender founding teams, the figure climbs to 74%. Yet the average deal size is 2.8 times higher for women in mixed-gender founding teams — a difference that cannot be explained by pipeline, sector choice or qualifications, the authors state. Meanwhile, the concentration of capital in male-led AI ventures and the exclusion of women-only teams from deep tech in 2025 suggest the European technology economy is narrowing its focus instead of expanding its problem-solving capacity to compete globally, they state.

The consequence is a closed loop

“The pattern most funds are working from was set a long time ago,” says Ana Andonovska, Founder, Even Founders. “It describes a very specific kind of founder — and the Nordic VC trend is actively reinforcing it, not disrupting it. The consequence is a closed loop. Investors source deals through founders they already backed, and those founders refer people who resemble them. That means the same type of founder gets backed again and, in turn, refers even more founders like them.”

“Capital follows conviction. Conviction follows familiarity. And familiarity is a self-perpetuating system that never has to confront a new definition of what a fundable founder looks like. When investors source deals through their existing portfolio of founders and angels, they are outsourcing their judgment to a network that is already self-selecting”, Andonovska continues.

The report shows women-only founders are concentrated in femtech, health tech, and food tech. Still, the funding mix of these companies points to weaker institutional conviction: 23% of rounds for women-only teams were grants, versus 12% for mixed-gender teams.

The research found that deep tech, which has zero women-only founding teams in the 2025 Nordic dataset, raised more capital than any other sector.