Locked out of power: Why the CPG industry is failing women

Women control $31.8 trillion of global spending and influence 70–80 per cent of all consumer purchases. By 2028, they will control 75 per cent of all discretionary spending worldwide.Yet the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry systematically blocks the entrepreneurs who best understand their core customer. Female founders face barriers to attracting capital, receiving just 1 per cent of VC funding. Female employees, despite making up more than 40 per cent of the workforce, hold only 32 per cent of senior leadership positions globally and face persistent pay gaps.As a result, the entire industry suffers, ignoring the perspective of the people making the majority of purchasing decisions. The bottom line is the CPG industry isn’t lacking brilliant women – it’s lacking doors that open, seats that are offered, and power that’s shared. This isn’t just unfair. It’s economically irrational.The glass aisle and capital starvationFrom my own research, 64 per cent of specialty food-and-drink small businesses are owned by women. Women-led brands deliver strong return on investment because they’re solving problems they experience and understand. They build for themselves, their friends and their communities. And consumers respond to that authenticity.In 2023, transactions for women-led, direct-to-consumer brands increased 54-fold compared with the previous year. Top-performing categories included beauty and wellness, apparel, supplements and personal care. Women entrepreneurs are proving the market exists.In 2024, just 2 per cent of total capital raised in Australia went to all-female founded teams and 15 per cent of investments went to start-ups with at least one woman in the founding team. This is despite women controlling or influencing most of the consumer spending.Women founders also have to navigate the ‘likability trap’. They must be assertive enough to be taken seriously but not so assertive they’re labeled ‘difficult’. Male founders exhibiting the exact same behaviours tend to be called confident, visionary or bold.In consumer packaged goods corporations in Australia, 9 per cent of CEOs are women. Roles that lead to the CEO position, such as COO, CFO and group executive roles remain 82 per cent male. And among roles that lead to that pipeline, the executive leadership team, only 33 per cent are held by women.The gap persists across all categories: food, beverage, health, wellness, beauty and household. Globally, the share of women in senior leadership positions is 32.2 per cent, nearly 10 percentage points lower than women’s overall workforce representation of 41.9 per cent.Without investment, women-led brands can’t scale. And without seniority, women can’t sufficiently influence key decisions. The issues aren’t accidental, they’re structural.Jessica Sepel launched JSHealth Vitamins in 2018 with $40,000 left in the bank after losing $10,000 to a scam manufacturer. Her journey into supplements grew from a decade-long personal battle with disordered eating and her popular health blog, which she’d built into a community of nearly 1 million followers.Sepel saw a gap in the vitamins market: consumers were overwhelmed and confused. So she did something no one had done before, she put the pain point on the label: “Anxiety + Stress”. “Hair + Libido”. “IBS Relief”. Simply and clearly showing they solved real problems she and her community experience and care about.Sepel’s customer return rate hit 75 per cent in 2022, meaning three-quarters of customers that purchase vitamins came back and repurchased.In 2023, with backing from two external investors, Sepel and her husband, Dean Steingold, moved to Los Angeles to scale in the US market. That decision unlocked 300 per cent year-on-year growth, landed JSHealth in premium retailers like Erewhon and positioned the brand for global expansion.Today, JSHealth is stocked in more than 3000 retailers worldwide, it is valued at over $600 million, and Sepel and Steingold landed at No. 8 on the 2025 Australian Financial Review Young Rich List. Sepel’s lived experience became category innovation and the market responded.Jessica Sepel, JSHealth VitaminsDouble barriers and double standardsEntrepreneurs, they face deep investor bias. Venture capitalists are predominantly male and they fund pattern-matching, backing founders who look like previous successful exits. That means men, mostly white, in their 30s and 40s.Consumer packaged goods is already a hard industry to sell. The margins are lower than tech, often in single digits, compared with tech’s 60–80 per cent gross margins. Investors chasing venture-scale returns gravitate toward software and platforms, not physical products with complex supply chains and thin profitability.When you combine low investor appetite for CPG with a gender bias, women face a double barrier: they’re building in a sector investors already avoid and they’re asking for capital in a system designed not to fund them.Network gaps compound the problem. Male founders typically access established networks, adviser pools and industry ‘boys’ clubs’ that open doors. Female founders and employees typically build from scratch, without the same level of institutional support, although there is evidence that some accelerators are aware of the issues and are trying to change this. Startmate is one of them.When investors don’t have the awareness, women face a ‘prove it first’ double standard. They’re asked to demonstrate traction that men are typically not required to show. Male founders get funded on potential. Female founders get funded on proof.Belinda Tumbers, SunRiceWhen Belinda Tumbers was appointed managing director of Kellogg’s Australia and New Zealand operations in 2015, she inherited a business that hadn’t performed well in over two years. The first thing she did was surround herself with a diverse team aligned with a clear vision. Over three years, that team turned around the 90-year-old business and returned it to growth.But Tumbers’ journey wasn’t without barriers. Early in her career, she was often one of the only women in the room. She attended external meetings where clients asked if she could “send a man instead” because they didn’t want to deal with a woman. Even as managing director, male peers confused her for an executive assistant.Despite this, Tumbers won the 2017 Telstra Business Woman of the Year Award and today, she’s CEO Global Rice at SunRice, a company that recently joined the S&P/ASX300 Index after more than doubling its market capitalisation from $495 million at its 2019 listing to over $1 billion. Tumbers’ leadership proves what the data shows: diverse teams deliver better business results.And globally, we’re witnessing a rollback of diversity initiatives despite their proven benefits. Companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on executive teams are 25 per cent more likely to report above-average profitability, yet the pushback continues.Commercial consequencesWomen bring unique insights into unmet consumer needs, particularly around health, wellness, family and sustainability. How many period products have been designed by men who have never experienced a period? How many baby products have been built by people who have never dealt with postpartum recovery?The industry is leaving real innovation on the table because it won’t fund the people who understand the problems. So when women can’t access capital, the entire industry loses.The State of Australian Startup Funding 2022 report stated that, despite record levels of deal participation from women founders, their share of total dollars dropped. In fact, of about 150 venture capital funds operating in Australia, one in three did not invest in a single woman founder at all in 2022, despite women-founded start-ups generating 78 cents per dollar of funding while male-founded start-ups generated just 31 cents per dollar.This capital starvation kills scale. Wealth stays concentrated in male hands. Innovation grounded in lived experience stays unfunded. The equality required for growth isn’t charity, it’s commercial logic.What changes when we get this rightWhen we fund women, promote women and share power with women, everyone benefits. More consumers get products designed by people who understand them. There are more consumer choices, better solutions and brands that reflect consumers’ values and lived experience.Investors get higher returns. Retailers get products that resonate. Female employees get leadership roles that reflect their capability, equal pay, flexible work models, and promotion pathways that don’t dead-end at middle management.The talent is there. The ideas are there. The consumer demand is there.I see this at our Foodpreneurs Festival. At the festival, 76 per cent of businesses are female-owned. Among our 2025 buyer pitch applicants, 60 per cent were female-owned or co-owned businesses. And at Chelsea Ford Co, we’ve platformed 350 women-owned brands over the past three years.The only thing missing, across the entire industry, is equal access.Get on board or get out of the wayThis is the call to action.To investors: you’re leaving money on the table. Track your portfolio by gender. Commit to closing the gap. The returns are there.To retailers: your consumers are women. Actively seek out women-led brands. Let them build the products your consumers want to buy.To corporate CPG: promote women into leadership. Pay them equally. Make flexibility standard, not a favour. Stop the rollback of diversity initiatives.To the industry: stop treating gender equality as a nice-to-have or a PR exercise. It’s a competitive advantage. Women are driving sustainability, creating emotional connections with consumers and delivering superior returns. Act accordingly.Women aren’t the future of business.They ARE business.The question is: who’s ready to open the doors?This story was published in the January edition of Inside FMCG.