WORK180 will launch in the UK on Thursday. Lloyd says this international expansion is being driven by clients.

"We had a lot of inquiries both from job seekers and employers and when we did market analysis we found the UK was quite progressed in terms of drive for change,"she says.

Lloyd joined the Startmate accelerator and started talking to venture capital firms and says within a month WORK180 had offers of $2.2 million. Instead,it raised $1 million in a seed funding round led by Skip Capital,the private investment fund of Farquhar,and other investors including the co-founders of Lux Group and Startmate.

Only26 per cent of venture capital funding in Australia goes to female-led businesses and Lloyd says she has faced discrimination. Three years ago,she had to stop discussions about raising capital after one potential investor asked Lloyd toget a hotel room with him during the meeting.

In this investment round the discrimination was not as overt.

"I do think it is harder for female-led businesses,"says Lloyd."We even had one VC call me a week after we pitched to say he had asked me harder questions than they had asked the men and he recognised that unconscious bias."

But Lloyd is confident she has the right people backing the business now and says WORK180 is already benefiting from its big-name investors. "We selected our investors based on not just the money but what else they could provide us,"she says.

Atlassian is also a client of WORK180 and while Farquhar declined to comment he directed questions to the principal of Skip Capital,Kim Jackson. “We are excited to back these phenomenal entrepreneurs who have created a great business and are setting the standard in gender equality,” Jackson says.

Competitors

Competitors in the Australian space include FlexCareers and Beam Australia. Beam's founders,Stephanie Reuss and Victoria Stuart,say gender equality in the jobs market"requires a huge shift in mindset".

"Anyone who is working towards that is great,"Reuss says."We are really focused on helping organisations take it a step further by innovating on their job designs and creating truly part-time roles that can open up job opportunities for more people."

Lloyd says WORK180 can offer something different to the Australian and UK market. "This investment will help us accelerate the growth of the team and extend our focus on ensuring women globally are able to get the work conditions that enables them to thrive,and employers to prosper with the best possible employees,” she says.

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