Wellington women take the lead by founding the majority of new businesses in the capital

Female-founded businesses raised $1,390,000 in pre-seed capital this year. Photo / Christin Hume, Unsplash

Wellington women are bucking the trend of male-dominated start-ups, with female-led companies comprising the majority of the capital's new businesses.

Creative HQ supports start-ups with a range of different programmes – and women are taking the lead across the board. This year, three-quarters of the attendants of Creative HQs Climate Response Accelerator programme were women, and in another – The Incubator programme - 60 per cent were women.

It has a number of successful businesses off its back – including Sharesies, which was co-founded by Wellington woman Brooke Roberts.

Chief executive Catherine Jones says it's great to see women taking the lead but ideally, gender wouldn't even factor in.

"However, the reality is that our programmes still stand out for more women founders participating than men on average. We know from research that this is still not the case in business nationally."

Nationwide, women make up just 17 per cent of business founders but in the last financial year, women founded businesses via Creative HQ raised $1,390,000 in pre-seed capital, which is almost 60 per cent of the total capital.

Jones says entrepreneurs are not chosen for the programmes based on gender but rather their ideas, resilience, their ideas and the opportunities for progress – which is why it's so great to see women coming out on top.

"New Zealand has a strong history on a global stage of women leadership, so it's great that we're seeing this represented in women entrepreneurship."