Closing the Gender Finance Gap: How Lift Women Is Funding Female Founders

What if women didn’t have to beg for capital, but could build, fund and scale their ideas on their own terms from anywhere in the world?

In this episode of FemTech at Work, we have Irene Tsang, founder and CEO of Lift Women Group, Australia’s first women-focused crowdfunding and funding ecosystem. From growing up in China and Hong Kong to starting over in Melbourne as a single mother of two, Irene shares the deeply personal journey and purpose that led her to tackle the $1.5 trillion global gender finance gap.

If you care about female founders, FemTech, women’s health, gender-lens investing, and new models of funding, this episode will inspire you to rethink what’s possible when we lift women together!

Key Takeaways:

• Find out how Irene’s journey as a migrant single mother led her to build Lift Women and dedicate her life to closing the gender finance gap.
• Discover why less than 2.3% of venture capital goes to women-led startups and how reward-based crowdfunding can flip the script.
• Learn how Lift Women’s RISE model (reward crowdfunding, partnerships, community, education) creates an end-to-end funding and support ecosystem for female founders.
• Understand how early crowdfunding traction helped FemTech startup OVUM AI go from idea to MVP to raising a $1.7M seed round.
• Find out why men are a crucial part of the Lift Women story and how male allies actively support female founders on the platform.
• Discover real FemTech examples from HPV-detecting period pads to biodegradable menstrual products and brain–hormone monitoring that are changing women’s health globally.
• Learn how even small contributions and micro-backing can meaningfully change the trajectory of women-owned businesses worldwide.
• Understand why confidence, impostor syndrome, and lack of networks often hold women back more than the absence of capital itself.
• Discover how Lift Women’s new AI co-pilot helps women structure campaigns and businesses in minutes, and when it actually makes sense to use AI in a startup.
• Learn how Irene defines success over the next 5–10 years not just in terms of Lift Women’s growth, but in the collective wins of the founders they support.

Resources:

Irene Tsang: LinkedIn

LiftWomen: LinkedIn

LiftWomen: https://project.liftwomen.com/

Maaike Steinebach : LinkedIn

Website Femtech Future https://www.femtechfuture.com

Instagram Femtech Future: @femtech_future

Ready to help rewrite the rules of who gets funded? Hit play now to hear how Irene Tsang and Lift Women are transforming the way female founders access capital, confidence and community and discover the simple steps you can take today to power the next generation of women-led innovation.

If this episode moved you, be part of the movement: share it with a friend who needs to hear it, hit like, leave a review so more listeners can discover these stories, and make your voice count in lifting women everywhere. See you next week for another episode of FemTech at Work.