Who Is Devaluing Females in S&T Entrepreneurship? The Buffering Role of Token Identity

Abstract

Males have been blamed for their prejudice towards females, and existing literature has dominantly advised increasing the proportion of females into authoritative positions as a remedy to mitigate gender inequality. Drawing on a unique dataset consisting of applicants and evaluating panelists from the Science & Technology Venture Program (STVP), we examine whether female evaluating panelists favor female applicants in S&T entrepreneurship and further explore the extent to which evaluating panelists’ token identity strengthens or weakens such gender bias. We found that female evaluating panelists discounted female applicants in S&T entrepreneurship while male evaluating panelist not. In addition, we evidenced that not all female evaluating panelists deal with gender identity threat in the same manner. Specifically, when the female evaluating panelist was a token, namely, the only female, the only novice, or the one with the non-tech background in the evaluating panel, such rating penalties towards female applicants were mitigated. Our research contributes to the literature on gender inequality, token, minority, as well as funding decisions in S&T entrepreneurship.