Please use this form to submit your study for inclusion into our database. It will be checked by a member of the Innovation Growth Lab team, who may be in contact to ask for more information. Your email address * Your name * Title * The name of the study Short summary A brief description of the project's goals and its current state Abstract <p>Female innovators raise fewer resources from investors, even when their ventures are similar to those of all-male teams. Efforts to mitigate the disparities have typically focused on changing how founders seek investment. However, the causes of gender disparities are systemic: in uncertain contexts, evaluators value women’s competence or leadership potential lower than men’s, and investors inquire more about risks when facing female founders than males. What is the effect of investment organizations’ evaluation practices on gender disparities in funding innovation This paper examines a two-stage global field experiment with investors making 1,871 investment decisions on early-stage startups, which resulted in $320,000 invested in 16 startups. The experiment changed an organization’s evaluation framework to systematize investor inquiry across all ventures by including prompts about (1) risk and reward and (2) progress during the evaluation period. This caused treated investors to (1) assess startups more consistently and (2) assess startup competence more dynamically than control investors. It eliminated, even reversed, the gender gap in investment outcomes. These results have implications for organizations making decisions in uncertain contexts, and those aiming to reduce gender disparities.</p> <p>IGL was pleased to have Amisha Miller join us for IGL2020 to discuss this research and why it is important to consider <a href="https://www.innovationgrowthlab.org/igl2020-global-conference">"Changing the System Not the Seeker: How Can Equity Investors Fund More Diverse Investments?"</a></p> <p>Those involved have <a href="https://develop.vilcap.com/smarter-systems">published a summary of results and recommendations</a> for how investors and accelerators can take action.</p> The full abstract of the study, if available Links https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/40693 Links to any published papers and related discussions Authors * Affiliations Academic and other institutes that the authors of the study are members of Delivery partner Organisations involved in delivering the trial, if appropriate Year Year Year199419951996199719981999200020012002200320042005200620072008200920102011201220132014201520162017201820192020202120222023202420252026 Month MonthJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec Day Day12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031 Journal Journal publishing the study, if available Publication stage * Working Paper Published Ongoing Research Forthcoming Discussion Paper Research theme * Entrepreneurship Innovation Business Growth Country Country or countries where this study took place. Topics What sort of topics does the study cover? Sample attributes Hypotheses / research question Sample Trial population and sample selection Number of treatment groups Size of treatment groups Size of control group Unit of analysis Clustered? Yes No Cluster details Trial attributes Treatment description Rounds of data collection Baseline data collection and method Data collection method and data collected Evaluation Outcome variables Results Intervention costs Cost benefit ratio Reference Citation for use in academic references
