Work-Bench calculated the percentage using its database of female-founded companies and information from financial data company PitchBook Data Inc., which shows a total of approximately 18,500 venture capital-backed business-to-business software startups in the U.S. Women have been historically underrepresented in the technology side of the software industry. U.S. Department of Labor data from 2019 shows that 18.1% of all software developers in the U.S. are women, and those women on average earn 88.7% of what their male counterparts earn. Things aren't easier for women who branch off to start their own enterprise software businesses, experts say. A combination of implicit biases, discrepancies in networking connections and a cycle that leaves women largely outside the venture-capital sphere makes it harder for female-led companies to get off the ground--perpetuating a stubborn gender gap in one of the country's most male-dominated industries. "Of course it's hurt me," Idit Levine, the founder and chief executive of Solo.io, said about being a woman in the enterprise software space.