---
title: "Women entrepreneurs and the finance they do not get"
description: "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?"
url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/women-entrepreneurs-and-finance
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/women-entrepreneurs-and-finance.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
date: "2026-10-23"
updated: "2026-10-23"
status: "seed"
tags: ["management", "entrepreneurship", "finance"]
keywords: ["women entrepreneurs", "access to finance"]
---

# 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.

## Related research activity

*The keywords this note follows, in the tracked finance, accounting, economics, management, operations research and AI journals as of 2026-10-26*

| Keyword | Papers, last 30 days | Rank | Papers per month, Oct 23 – Oct 26* | Papers, last 36 months |
|---|---:|---:|---|---:|
| women entrepreneurs | 2 | #1303 | 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 3, 3, 2, 4, 4, 5, 4, 3, 2, 8, 4, 2, 2, 4, 4, 5, 2, 5, 3, 1, 0, 4, 4, 3, 3, 4, 4, 3, 2, 3, 2 | 100 |
| access to finance | 4 | #525 | 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 4, 3, 3, 2, 4, 5, 1, 4, 8, 5, 6, 3, 5, 6, 7, 6, 3, 11, 7, 8, 6, 3, 7, 10, 2, 4, 4, 6, 0, 7, 4 | 150 |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Women entrepreneurs and the finance they do not get. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 23, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/women-entrepreneurs-and-finance

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-ideas-women-entrepreneurs-and-finance,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Women entrepreneurs and the finance they do not get},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/women-entrepreneurs-and-finance}},
  urldate = {2026-10-23},
  note = {Journal Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}
```

License: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).