"Amount of material" isn't what's relevant. It's closer to "number of atomic nuclei."
A certain mass of air is less shielding then the same mass of water. By number density, air is mostly nitrogen atoms, whereas water is mostly hydrogen atoms. Overall this means that per kilogram, water contains 2.4x as many atomic nuclei as air.
--
Of course there are bigger problems with Venus cloud cities. At the 50 km height where the pressure is 1 atmosphere, the temperature is 75 °C (167 °F). At the 55 km altitude where the temperature is 27 °C (81 °F), the pressure is 0.5 atmospheres.[0]
As a bonus, both these altitudes lie deep within the layer of sulfuric acid clouds (50-80 km).