CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2018
| Author | May, Anna |
|---|---|
| Title | Dissecting the Gender Gap in Entrepreneurial Ambitions and Success: Evidence from Crowdfunding |
| Summary | Despite the growing number of women-owned businesses, women still lack equal opportunities for raising external capital. An alternative form of traditional private equity sources, crowdfunding, is expected to democratize access to capital: the transparent nature of online crowdfunding marketplaces might mitigate the effect of discrimination and biased social structures against women and minorities. In my thesis, I seek to examine which parts of the gender gap in entrepreneurial participation and success can be closed by using this new form of financing, and what are the characteristics of crowdfunding platforms that can be adopted by venture capitalist and business angels to make their decisions more equitable. I analyze the gender differences in risk-taking and domain choice of entrepreneurs through examining more than 15 thousand product development projects initiated on the largest reward-based crowdfunding website, Kickstarter. I find no gender difference in risk-taking and success in terms of setting and reaching the desired target amount, but I find that men collect/receive more premium over their goal. Using topic modelling on the textual descriptions of the campaigns, I show that women and men engage in different fields, and women tend to choose less lucrative domains. Domain choice explains a substantial part of the gender gap in premium on Kickstarter. Based on these findings, as a first step towards narrowing the gender gap in access to capital, traditional sources of financing should adapt more transparent and equitable policies as seen on crowdfunding platforms. However, for long term change, regulators need to take into account deeper underlying social structures that affect men and women's domain choices and that cannot be addressed solely by changing entrepreneurship policies. |
| Supervisor | Békés, Gábor |
| Department | Economics MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2018/may_anna.pdf |
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