The Glass Ceiling of Female Founders

In a world that celebrates innovation and entrepreneurial boldness, unequal access to capital remains a silent but persistent gender barrier. Over the past decade, startups founded by women in the United States have gained visibility in the venture capital landscape. But behind apparent progress lies a less flattering reality: while the number of deals struck by female founders is growing, the average amount of capital raised remains significantly lower than male-led startups. You might call it Gender Gap 2.0. In a recent study, Chuan Chen, Junnan He and Yanrong Jia and I address this imbalance with an econometric study that combines economic theory and unpublished data on startups and accelerators. Our intuition is as simple as powerful: considering accelerators as “colleges for startups,” capable of signaling the quality of a fledgling company in the eyes of investors. By estimating a matching model for VCs and startups — and post-accelerator performance — we were able to isolate the role of gender in the ability to raise funds. The result? Startups with at least one female founder are less likely to obtain significant funding, even with the same level of observable quality.

But what lies behind this gap? The paper documents an oft-ignored mechanism: the reluctance — or impossibility — of many female founders to move to other states to benefit from additional investment. The geographic constraint, often linked to family obligations, reduces access to networks of contacts, mentorships and investors. However, when female founders manage to overcome the family household constraint and have access to more competitive programs, the gender gap tends to narrow over time, a sign that the problem is not related to entrepreneurial potential but to initial conditions of access.

We also highlight a more optimistic aspect: the positive effect of network and group size. Accelerators with larger cohorts and consolidated networks help reduce the gap, creating spaces where mentorship, peer learning and social capital can become levers of gender equity. In this sense, policies for the design of acceleration programs should be tuned to contemplate tools of active inclusion. A concrete example? Women who attend higher-quality accelerators tend to close the gap five years after admission, a sign that the quality of the innovative environment can make a difference.

The findings of our study go beyond an assessment of the men-women divide. Our method is also useful to better understand the factors that really make the difference for the success of a startup. Our approach is not limited to looking at visible data, such as industry of operation or founders’ curricula, but is also able to take hidden variables into account, such as founders’ motivation or contact networks. This way of analyzing things can be useful in other contexts, too; for example, to understand the difficulties encountered by those who live far from major urban centers or start from disadvantaged conditions.

Because promoting equity in financing is not just a question of justice. It is also a strategy that can mobilize untapped entrepreneurial talent and support more inclusive and resilient economic growth. For comparable levels of firm quality, startups founded by women tend to have a lower failure rate and have the same likelihood of being acquired by a larger corporation as male-founded counterparts. Today more than ever, capital must learn to recognize value beyond prejudice. Because potential has no gender, but opportunities often do.