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The purpose of this paper is to understand women’s approaches to acquiring financial and other resources is essential for closing the entrepreneurship gender gap. In nearly 40% of economies, women’s early-stage entrepreneurial activity is half or less than half of that of men’s.

Even when there is extensive literature on female entrepreneurs, the authors review the findings through a Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-1)9 crisis lens, trying to find new perspectives and solutions. With the approach of a systematic review of 4,520 publications on financing topics related to female entrepreneurs, various sources of financing available to female entrepreneurs are considered: bootstrapping, banks, business angels, venture capital and crowdfunding.

Identifying potential gender bias both on the supply and the demand side of financing, this research highlights new directions in encouraging female entrepreneurship and gives guidelines to public organisations on how to foster advanced forms of financing for female entrepreneurs in COVID-19 times.

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed an unprecedented challenge for economies and companies. Female entrepreneurs are the ones who have been hit harder, as they overcome pre-existing barriers, such as lack of access to finance, lack of networks and mentors and gendered priorities, among others. Without ensuring gender policies to counter these incremental negative effects, the authors face the risk of widening the gender gap.

Regarding previous systematic reviews of literature, this paper focusses on a specific challenge, how women entrepreneurs finance their activity, with a double vision: supply and demand of money.

Canada has lagged in access to capital for high-potential, growth-oriented new ventures, but has made considerable strides in the past decade. This study aims to examine the evolving state of the market for risk capital in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic, providing a critical assessment of government policy from the perspective of angel investors and diverse communities of entrepreneurs.

A thematic analysis was conducted of seven COVID-19 roundtable discussions hosted by the National Angel Capital Organization that included 51 global and national-level business and political leaders. The analysis extracted the most salient details from the discussions, distilling them into timely and actionable insights for policymakers.

The analysis suggests that the government’s economic policy response to the COVID-19 crisis fails to address the sudden liquidity problems faced by new ventures. Entrepreneurs and angel investors have remained resilient, rallied as a community and demonstrated an extraordinary level of trust. Traditionally under-represented communities of entrepreneurs are more affected by the crisis than others.

The findings and recommendations are of relevance to policymakers interested in post-COVID-19 economic policies to address the unique challenges faced by start-ups and ensure their full contribution to economic recovery.

The paper presents several policy recommendations and proposes a novel framework to describe the impacts of the pandemic on different categories of start-ups.