The numbers on paper look encouraging. As of March 2026, 48,257 Emirati women are counted as entrepreneurs, and women now own or co-own more than 114,000 small and medium-sized enterprises across the UAE. In Abu Dhabi alone, the Registration Authority issued 3,058 new economic licenses to female entrepreneurs in the first half of 2026, up 6.4 per cent from 2,873 licenses in the same period a year earlier.
But the money tells a different story. In the first half of 2026, male-founded startups across the MENA region captured nearly 95 per cent of all capital, raising 1.7 billion dollars across 213 deals. Female-founded companies secured just 2.5 million dollars across 14 transactions during the same period, representing only 0.14 per cent of total funding.
A widening gap between growth and capital
The pattern is not confined to the UAE. In Jordan, the World Bank-linked Strengthening Economic Opportunities for Women Project, worth 226 million dollars, has helped push women-owned businesses in the country to 2,026 as of July 2026, more than double the original target of 1,000 set for June 2028. Entrepreneurship among women is clearly rising across the region, yet access to serious growth capital has not kept pace.
Divya Unnikrishnan, co-founder of Dubai-based technology and AI services provider NoorConnect, has felt that gap directly. After nearly two decades at Accenture, Capgemini, and HP, she started her own venture a little more than a year ago. "Getting meetings with investors, we have sort of figured it out. Two or three meetings in, they are still not convinced. The final cheque… it's been a challenge," she said. She added, "I would say the opportunity is there. But a little bit of bias is always there."
Why the checks are not landing
Heather Henyon, of Mindshift Capital, which reviews roughly 1,000 companies each year, said the pipeline of promising founders is not the issue. "We are inundated by women-led companies seeking capital. There certainly isn't a shortage," she said. Still, she noted the disparity in outcomes: "Generally, female founders raise less capital than all-male founding teams, and the UAE has a similar dynamic."
Part of the explanation may lie in who is writing the checks. Women account for roughly 10 per cent of general partners at venture firms in the US, a structural imbalance that Henyon says needs to shift alongside founder numbers. "Change one side to change the other," she said.
Carlina Marani pointed to a broader headwind, noting that global rollbacks of diversity and inclusion efforts have made the environment tougher. "If we look at global development, especially with the US kind of reversing all the inclusion and diversity programmes, etc, I think that has set us back a lot, right?" she said. She summed up what founders are asking for with a line from a friend's T-shirt: "Need money, not friends. I think that's a good tagline for what we need to give the females. I'm not saying more, but as much money as we're giving the males."
