Race and Gender in Entrepreneurial Finance

Benevolent Sexism and the Gender Gap in Startup Evaluation

“…As such, we extend past work which has mostly inferred the role of sexist attitudes from the observed gender gaps in startup outcomes rather than directly testing this role. In doing so, we respond to a recent call to collect data on the proposed mechanisms of the observed gender gaps in entrepreneurship and tease out their unique contribution to such gaps (Ewens, 2022). In addition, although the use of experiments might raise questions about whether our findings can be generalized to real-life evaluation contexts, we used a highly immersive vignette methodology to create a realistic scenario and thus increase external validity (Aguinis & Bradley, 2014).…”

“…First, we identify a novel explanation as to why women continue to be underrepresented in entrepreneurship despite numerous efforts by practitioners and policy-makers to close the gap: the role of benevolent sexism in startup evaluation. By studying this subtle and seemingly benign type of sexism, we complement past work on negative stereotypes about women's entrepreneurial competence and credibility (Ewens, 2022;Guzman & Kacperczyk, 2019), which is suggestive of traditional (hostile) sexism at play. While traditional sexism certainly drives part of the gender gap in entrepreneurship as discussed in our literature review, it has become less accepted in today's society, while subtle prejudices like benevolent sexism are still widespread.…”

“…Notwithstanding the importance of these insights, the emphasis on negative attitudes toward women overlooks the fact that prejudices against women are not uniform in valence—some are blatantly derogative while others are more subtle and ostensibly positive (Czopp et al, 2015; Ewens, 2022). This idea was first formalized in Glick and Fiske’s (1996) work on ambivalent sexism.…”