Don’t Pitch Like a Girl!: How Gender Stereotypes Influence Investor Decisions

Lakshmi Balachandra, Tony Briggs, Kim Eddleston and Candida Brush

Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 2019, vol. 43, issue 1, 116-137

Abstract: We consider the role that gender-stereotyped behaviors play in investors’ evaluations of men- and women-owned ventures. Contrary to research suggesting that investors exhibit bias against women, we find that being a woman entrepreneur does not diminish interest by investors. Rather, our findings reveal that investors are biased against the display of feminine-stereotyped behaviors by entrepreneurs, men and women alike. Our study finds that investor decisions are driven in part by observations of gender-stereotyped behaviors and the implicit associations with the entrepreneur’s business competency, rather than the entrepreneur’s sex.

Keywords: women/minority issues; start-up; new ventures; entrepreneurship (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (42)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1042258717728028 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:entthe:v:43:y:2019:i:1:p:116-137

DOI: 10.1177/1042258717728028

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().