Plant- and cell-based innovation is flipping the script on how food is made, but when it comes to systematic disparities against women, the sector is not bucking the trend.

A new report offers a snapshot of the challenges facing female entrepreneurs in this nascent but fast-developing food tech segment, from investment inequity and racial discrimination to sexual harassment and caregiver burden.

Forty-eight percent of the 160 female startup founders and top executives in the field surveyed said they've encountered bias while raising funds, of whom 75 percent reported gender bias. Three out of four women entrepreneurs with a male co-founder believed their business partners don't face the same investment challenges as they do.

Racial bias was also evident when seeking capital, with 47 percent of businesswomen of color experiencing it.

"More often than not, investors are impressed by my ability and technical expertise I bring to my company – yet rather than invest in me as a Black female founder, they offer me a job. It feels like my ability to lead as a CEO is constantly questioned because of my race and gender," the survey quoted an unnamed female entrepreneur as saying.

"It's incredibly disappointing to hear that gender and racial bias continue to have such a significant effect on investment in innovation in such a strong emerging market," said Jennifer Stojkovic, founder of Vegan Women Summit (VWS), the women-centric event organization behind the poll.

The workplace has long been – and remains – a quagmire of obstacles for women who have to contend with pay gaps, limited opportunities for advancement, dismissive attitudes, entrenched stereotypes and sexual harassment. Climbing the corporate ladder doesn't guarantee fewer run-ins with inequality, and the same goes for working in future-oriented forward-thinking industries.

Food-tech proponents are rethinking how to feed a growing population without straining already stretched natural resources, damaging the planet or sacrificing animals. But their mission of breaking away with convention doesn't seem to extend to the boardrooms and investor meetings. The barriers on the fundraising trail that female innovators in the plant- and cell-based space reported in the survey are reflective of a broader gender disparity in the agri-food tech industry.

The "Money Where Our Mouths Are" report, published in 2019, showed the yawning gap between female- and male-led enterprises in clinching deals and attracting money. Only seven percent of all 2018 agri-food tech deals went to female-only teams, who also secured a trifling three percent of all investments.

The year 2018 saw 16.9 billion U.S. dollars injected into the sector, up 43 percent from a year earlier, but the increasing appeal of the industry is not paying dividends for women. "Dollar funding for startups in our sample with at least one female founder dropped 37 percent from 2017 to 2018," researchers wrote.

The lukewarm support for female entrepreneurs revolutionizing the farm-to-fork system comes despite research showing that women-driven enterprises are a sounder investment than their male-founded counterparts. Startups achieving 200 percent+ growth are 75 percent more likely to have a woman at the helm and not only do these companies grow faster, they make bigger bucks.

The VWS report also revealed nearly one in three (30 percent) female founders said they grappled with sexual harassment and discrimination. Half of them said this was at the hand of an investor, while 40 percent identified a supplier or vendor as the perpetrator.

Mothers are also finding it hard to balance career and care-giving, with almost half (45 percent) admitting that "their role as a parent or guardian has been a barrier to their success in business," according to the poll.

But there's a silver lining. The new coronavirus outbreak has given a boost to tech-powered innovation in the food industry and accelerated acceptance of alternatives to animal-derived products amid disruptions to meat supply chains and better understanding of the environmental impact of traditional factory farming.

Investors are sniffing out opportunities as disrupters press ahead with their plans to change the world. Thirty percent of female founders saw an increase in investor interest and 50 percent noted that consumer demand was up during the COVID-19 pandemic.

With two out of three women planning to hit the fundraising trail within the next 12 months to fuel their businesses, "there has never been a better time to invest in female-led innovation," said Stojkovic.