Recently, the European tech world has been debating both the apparent rise of a more masculine culture, such as the male domination of hackathons, amid the continued paucity of female participation in the industry across all sectors.
The article, by journalist Freya Patty, argued that “Tech Bro” culture is essentially a ‘Closed Culture’ comprised of Hackathons, hacker houses, and a “grindset” culture that trends heavily male.
And the figures do tend to bear that out. Participation in hackathons for instance remains heavily male-dominated at around 30% women globally according to Womenhack.com.
It also highlighted how a Long-hours “996” culture tends to select for a narrow founder archetype of the young, unencumbered and male, thus excluding often women, parents and anyone with other constraints. And it’s fair to say that many podcasts and tech news outlets tend to feature male founders overwhelmingly.
The article attracted criticism from tech influencer/podcaster Seb Johnson and Alan Chang, Founder & CEO at Fuse, who branded it “anti-ambition, anti-excellence, anti-merit.” A UK MP, Samantha Niblett, even weighed in on the debate.
There could be many factors at play here: the tech industry itself, the media or a decline in ‘DEI’ pressure across the board after the election of Donald Trump and the pivoting of right-wing politics towards ultra-conservatism.
But does this debate mask what is really happening in the tech industry itself, underneath the culture wars? Agata Nowicka of Female Foundry recently released a report which surveyed 1,000 women founders about their opinions.
Despite not receiving scant coverage (it was not reported in Sifted, for instance), the “Female Innovation Index 2026 Survey” makes for very interesting reading (more below).
Female founders are leveraging AI at all levels. Some 86% of female founders are now using AI in their businesses, both for biz dev and product dev.
But, says Nowicka, “the lack of representation is a major issue in the industry. It’s a reflection of the top of the funnel. Too few women are starting businesses.”
However, whereas in the past male or female founders needed to “raise a million just to do an MVP, that’s no longer the case. You can vibe-code a product to start with, test it and go-to-market, it’s never been better for founders.” So she hopes that this is just a significant lag in the data for female founders, as the founder-funnel is gradually affected by the rise of AI.
Nowicka doesn’t agree with the idea that the Tech Bro culture at some (not all) hackathons should be over-indexed in this debate: “Entrepreneurship is often very private, where people build privately rather than in public at hackathons. There are other ways… And it’s more time efficient.”
“Yes, hackathons are male-dominated… We can’t do much about it. Maybe there should be some other models,” she told Pathfounders.
It’s her view that the media still has a role to play in surfacing female role models in tech, especially those at the beginning of the journey, not just the best-known women founders. Representation around podcasts or quotas doesn’t solve the issue, but more effort could be made on the part of the media and podcasters: “It's about quality as well… We want to make sure that those people who represent the ecosystem and are supposed to drive inspiration for others have merit, to be there. So I don't feel that it's a pipeline issue…. But there is not enough effort, as I said, to find those [female founders].”
She added that the debate around “996” culture is “extremely simplifying”. In fact, the realities of building a startup is that it’s never 996, and more like “24/, then 8, 5, 6. It's never that linear, it's never that regular. There will be businesses that will mean founders operate at high velocity, high volume… and there will be those businesses in enterprises where the next phone call for the client happens in the next three weeks, so they can have that balance.”
She added that women entering the tech industry might well be put off such extreme language: “It’s like, ‘I’ve just had the baby. How am I going to this?’ In reality, it's not that linear, and it's not that extreme.”
Findings from the Female Innovation Index 2026 Survey:
Some 1,307 European female-founded startups raised €7.5B through 1,376 deals in 2025, marking the highest amount in three years. and a 19% year-on-year increase. And 22% of all venture capital and 25% of all rounds raised by female-founded startups in Europe in 2025 went to companies leveraging AI technology.
Of all female-founded AI companies that raised capital in 2025, 47% operated at the application layer, with security (18%), health (16%), robotics (11%), and fintech (10%) attracting the highest levels of AI investment.
AI is overwhelmingly viewed as a clear business enabler, with 86% of female founders using it and 90% reporting it has made building their business easier over the past year.
Three out of the ten largest rounds raised by female-founded or co-founded companies in 2025 went to AI-first companies: Synthesia (UK, $180M in January), Quantexa (UK, $175M in March), Dexory (UK, $155M in October), and Einride (Sweden, $100M in October).
Deeptech remains a leading sector for innovation and funding among female entrepreneurs in Europe, capturing 34% of all venture capital raised in 2025.