Over the last decade, new ventures across industries have framed their businesses in terms of social impact. We observed that a disproportionately high number of ventures that emphasize social impact seem to be founded by women. This could be because female founders are more likely to care about social issues than men. But we also wondered if something else might be going on: perhaps the women who started social enterprises were more likely to get funding than women who started traditional businesses.
Women Entrepreneurs Are More Likely to Get Funding If They Emphasize Their Social Mission
Yet more evidence that gender stereotypes affect who gets backed.
March 07, 2018
Summary.
Over the last decade, new ventures across industries have framed their businesses in terms of social impact. A disproportionately high number of these ventures seem to be founded by women. One reason? When female founders emphasize the social mission of their startups, they’re more likely to get funding. A study of 43 ventures found that on average, female-led ventures were perceived as less viable than male-led ventures. However, female-led ventures that more heavily emphasized their social impact managed to avoid this gender penalty. (Male-led ventures were unaffected.) These patterns were the same regardless of whether evaluators were male or female.
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