Flower Vase: The Effect of Token Female Representation on Entrepreneurial Financing
Abstract
It is widely recognized that female entrepreneurs face greater challenges than their male counterparts when seeking financial resources in the technology sector. In this study, we separate token female representation—i.e., women are present but remain silent throughout the presentation of an entrepreneurial project—from active female representation, and incorporate the gender of evaluators to examine how these factors may jointly affect evaluators’ evaluations of entrepreneurial projects in the technology sector. We propose that relative to male evaluators, female evaluators tend to give lower evaluations to projects with token female representation since it may remind the female evaluators of their own stereotyped gender identity. Conducted in a unique setting wherein panels comprising female and male evaluators rated funding applications, our study supports this prediction. Moreover, we find that female evaluators’ lower evaluations of projects with token female representation are more pronounced when they are in more vulnerable positions, as indicated by that (1) they sit on a panel, the majority of which are men, (2) when they are the younger members on the panel, and (3) when they have a non-elite education background. Our research makes important contributions to the literature on technological entrepreneurship, tokenism, and gender diversity research.
Speaker Biography
Dr. Yan “Anthea” Zhang is a professor and the Fayez Sarofim Vanguard Chair of Strategic Management at the Jones Graduate School of Business, Rice University. She is President of Strategic Management Society (SMS) (https://strategicmanagement.net/) during January 2023-December 2024. Prior to being elected President of SMS in 2021, Dr. Zhang had served on the board of SMS for six years. She has also served on the board of directors of the International Corporate Governance Society (ICGS) for three years. She is an elected Fellow of Strategic Management Society (SMS) and Academy of International Business (AIB). She has served as an associate editor of Academy of Management Journal and Strategic Management Journal, and a consulting editor of Management and Organization Review. She is an area editor of Journal of International Business Studies.
Dr. Zhang joined Rice University in July 2001. Her research focuses on CEO succession and corporate governance of public-listed companies and family firms, foreign direct investments, technological entrepreneurship, and energy transition. She has published extensively on these topics in leading academic journals, such as Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, and Journal of International Business Studies, among others. Her research has been cited in top business media outlets such as Harvard Business Review, Economist, Business Week, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, USA Today, and Financial Times, among others. She has published a co-authored book on managerial succession in family-owned businesses in China. She was the recipient of Strategic Management Society Emerging Scholar Award in 2010.
Dr. Zhang received her Ph.D. degree in business administration from the University of Southern California (USC), Master of Philosophy degree in international business from City University of Hong Kong, and BA and MA degrees in economics from Nanjing University, China. She received the Distinguished Alumni Award from College of Business, City University of Hong Kong in 2019.