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Chicago was recently named the city with the highest percentage of women-led startups, and according to a recent analysis from Crunchbase, that might be due to one impressive feat.
Illinois universities lead the Midwest in producing the highest amount of female startup founders.
Out of the 25 highest female founder-producing universities, only four came from the Midwest — and three call Illinois home. Northwestern University came in at number 12 on the list, while the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and University of Chicago landed at 18 and 21, respectively.
In total, the three schools have produced 119 degree-holding female founders whose startups have received funding since 2009, many of whom have settling their businesses in Chicago.
Released earlier this year, the original report was a comprehensive study on over 3,000 female founders. The report showed upward mobility in the number of startups being founded by women. Between 2009 and 2014, the number of women-led, VC-backed startups nearly doubled.
The race for the number one spot was a dead heat between seeming founder factories Stanford and Harvard, with Stanford cinching the win by one founder (236 vs. 235).
MIT, University of California Berkeley, and Columbia rounded out the top five.
As the advocates for women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) grow ever louder, the study also dove into data about the types of degrees held by female founders. The top three areas of study were Social Science (30%), Business (18%), and Arts and Humanities (17%), while STEM degrees made up just under a third of all areas of study.
Those numbers sit in stark contrast to that gender’s male counterparts. The study found that male founders were three times as likely to have a computer science degree and just over twice as likely to have studied engineering. In total, 63 percent of male founders had a STEM degree — which more than doubles the number for women.
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