Breaking barriers or maintaining status quo? Female representation in decision-making group of venture capital firms and the funding of woman-led businesses

Lei Xu, Amy Y. Ou, Haemin Dennis Park and Han Jiang

Journal of Business Venturing, 2024, vol. 39, issue 1

Abstract: We examine whether and when female representation in decision-making groups of venture capital firms affects the firms' decision to fund woman-led businesses. By developing an intra- and inter-group categorization framework for group decision-making, we argue that, in the male-dominated venture capital industry, decision-making groups with higher female representation are less likely to fund woman-led businesses. However, this negative effect is mitigated when the decision-making group has more politically neutral members or when members have more shared prior employment affiliations. Using a longitudinal panel dataset of funding decisions by 151 U.S.-based venture capital firms, the empirical analyses support our theoretical predictions. We also enriched and complemented our empirical findings with qualitative evidence.

Keywords: Female representation; Social categorization; Decision-making group; Venture capital; Funding of woman-led businesses; Gender equality; Qualitative analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0883902623000824
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:jbvent:v:39:y:2024:i:1:s0883902623000824

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusvent.2023.106368

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Venturing is currently edited by S. Venkataraman

More articles in Journal of Business Venturing from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().