Women entrepreneurs and the finance they do not get
Women entrepreneurs appear on 32 recent papers in the management and economics journals, and 14 of 43 such papers carry a funding, finance or credit keyword. Women-led startups still receive a small share of venture capital, and women-owned small firms pay more for loans in several studies. Is the gap demand, supply, or the way applications are read?
What prompted this
Since October 2025, 43 papers carry a women-entrepreneur or women-owned-business keyword (23 in management journals, 18 in economics): "women entrepreneurs" on 32, "women's entrepreneurship" on 7, "women-owned businesses" on 5. Fourteen of them also carry a funding, finance, venture, loan, credit, investor or crowdfunding keyword; "access to finance" appears on 65 papers in the archive, mostly about firms in general.
Questions
- In loan and venture applications with the same business plan and financials, do women founders receive worse terms, and does the gap close when the evaluator is a model rather than a person?
- Do women ask for less, and if so, is that a response to expected rejection?
- Do funds and lenders that set targets for women-led firms change their deal flow, or only their reporting?
Data that could help
Loan application data with decisions, venture deal data with founder gender (PitchBook, Crunchbase), and audit studies with matched applications.
Next step
Run a correspondence study sending matched loan applications that differ only in the founder's gender to online lenders.