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Men founders raise almost 50× more venture capital (VC) than women. As 93 per cent of VCs are men, because of the significant gender imbalance in gatekeepers and investment decision-makers for early-stage capital, there may be critical outcomes for women entrepreneurs who are being caused from men having overweighed in decision-making roles. Outcomes include biases against women by VCs that prevent their ventures from being considered for funding from the pitch as well as obtaining opportunities to pitch VCs in consideration for funding from biases in the evaluations of the businesses themselves.

This paper is a consolidation of several studies the author has conducted in VC decision-making and gender bias to understand the drivers of the enormous gender gap in VC funding. The author presented it as a talk at the University of Regina and was asked to submit a paper about it here.

The findings reveal how the 93 per cent male context of the VC industry is in itself a significant cause of the gender gap in funding. If there were more women VCs, more women entrepreneurs would be funded.

The author showcases how the gender gap in decision-making roles in VC has important implications for women entrepreneurs to obtain funding.

Globally, the number of women entrepreneurs lags behind the number of men. Understanding how women entrepreneurs can be developed and fostered remains an open avenue of inquiry. One particular area of consideration is the role of other women in supporting and sustaining women’s entrepreneurship. Using social identity theory for our framing, we utilize in-person interviews with various women entrepreneurs across a range of global settings (urban Hong Kong, Singapore, United Kingdom, and rural India) to focus on understanding the roles of other women as they relate to entrepreneurship. Across settings, we found that women entrepreneurs identified four key roles that other women played in developing their ventures. Furthermore, certain roles, such as having a female role model, were critical in rural settings over urban settings. We thus consider the implications of having other women for women’s entrepreneurship broadly.

Entrepreneurial firms such as professional service firms (PSFs) face constant challenges to acquire resources, one of the greatest of which is the challenge to win client engagements. Although rhetoric is at the center of the challenge to win client engagements, scholars have not identified what rhetorical strategies are the most persuasive to potential clients. By exploring one type of PSF, architecture firms, we argue that PSFs can compete for and legitimate themselves with clients by deploying institutional logics that provide symbolic frameworks and meaning. Since multiple institutional logics exist in society, a critical question for a PSF is which logic is most persuasive to clients. We analyze architecture firms’ written pitches to predict which rhetoric strategies win the valuable resource of a client engagement for a multiclient state project. Our results identify that rhetoric deploying a “profession” logic was most effective whereas a “business” logic was counter-productive in obtaining client engagements and securing resources for the firm.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief history of the evolution of the Diana Project and the Diana International Research Conference. The authors examine the impact of the publications, conferences and research contributions and consider key factors in the success of this collaborative research organization. They discuss the ongoing legacy, suggesting ways to extend this into the future.

This paper uses an historical narrative and a citation analysis.

The Diana Project was founded by five women professors in 1999 with the purpose of investigating women’s access to growth capital. Following a series of academic articles, and numerous presentations, the first Diana International Conference was held in Stockholm, Sweden. At this convening, 20 scholars from 13 countries shared their knowledge of women’s entrepreneurship, venture creation and growth, culminating in the first volume of the Diana Book Series. Since then, 14 international conferences have been held, resulting in 10 special issues of top academic journals and 11 books. More than 600 scholars have attended or participated in Diana conferences or publications.

Contributions from the Diana International Conferences’ special issues of journals and books have advanced theory across topics, levels, geographies and methods. Articles emerging from Diana scholars are some of the top contributions about women’s entrepreneurship and gender to the field of entrepreneurship. Future research directions are included.

This analysis demonstrates the success of a unique woman-focused collaborative research initiative and identifies key success factors, suggesting how these might be expanded in the future.

To date, more than 600 scholars have participated in the Diana International Conferences or publications. Diana is the only community dedicated to rigorous and relevant research about gender and women’s entrepreneurship. Going forward, efforts to expand work on education for women’s entrepreneurship, women entrepreneurship faculty and careers, and women entrepreneurs, gender and policy will take place to extend this legacy.

The paper is unique in that it is the first to show the substantial legacy and impact of the Diana project since its inception in 1999. Further, it demonstrates how a feminist approach to entrepreneurial principles can yield insights about this unique research initiative and collaborative organization.