Equity Crowdfunding Success for Female Entrepreneurs: French Evidence.

Summary A large body of literature documents the significant difficulties experienced by female entrepreneurs in obtaining early-stage funding from investors. We investigate this issue in the emerging equity crowdfunding (ECF) context. Our results, based on data from four French ECF platforms, confirm that the feminisation of top management significantly reduces the likelihood of funding, suggesting that crowdfunding does not alleviate the difficulties that women face in raising funds to create startups.