Entrepreneurial teams and gender roles: evidence from equity crowdfunding achievement

We examine the impact of gender on equity crowdfunding outcomes. Analyzing data from a Chinese equity crowdfunding platform, we find no significant funding difference between female-led and male-led entrepreneurial teams. This suggests that equity crowdfunding can potentially democratize entrepreneurial finance for women in the Chinese market. The gender composition within entrepreneurial teams, however, does affect equity crowdfunding outcomes: mixed-gender teams outperform single-gender teams and teams with an unbalanced gender ratio outperform those with a balanced gender ratio. Specifically, male-dominated teams and female-dominated teams achieve the best funding outcomes. This conclusion remains robust across a series of checks. Notably, the funding benefits associated with gender diversity diminish at higher levels of diversity, indicating a nonlinear relationship between team gender diversity and crowdfunding achievement.