Toronto - Accelerator programs are supposed to give entrepreneurs the mentorship, training and skills boost that will help launch them towards success.
But in countries where the gender playing field still steeply tilts toward male advantage, women-led businesses that participated in accelerators showed no financial improvement, or even did worse, compared to ventures that applied but weren't accepted.
"Ironically, this was especially true for those that participated in accelerators focused on women's empowerment," said researcher Sarah Kaplan, professor emerita in strategic management at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management as well as founding director for its Institute for Gender and the Economy.
Prof. Kaplan wanted to know whether promises that accelerators could help narrow the gender divide in entrepreneurial success were bearing out. Joined by Nilanjana Dutt of Bocconi University, the researchers honed in on social innovation accelerators because these tend to attract more women over more Silicon Valley-style programs.
They drew on data for more than 1,400 ventures across 65 countries that had applied to 33 different accelerators between 2013 and 2015. The study built on data from the Global Accelerator Learning Initiative, which tracks follow-on impacts of accelerator programs around the world, including comparative information between applicants admitted and rejected from programs.
At first glance, the researchers found that women-led businesses did not benefit as much from accelerator participation as male-led businesses did. But a more nuanced picture emerged once they layered in other information about the contexts in which accelerators were operating, including a World Economic Forum index on gender equality and surveys to get at details about the accelerator programs.
"In more gender-egalitarian countries, accelerators were doing a great job of supporting women entrepreneurs and especially when they focused on women's empowerment," said Prof. Kaplan. In financial terms, "it was a pretty dramatic difference and one that should make everyone pause."
In less gender egalitarian settings, accelerators may not be benefitting women-led ventures because, the researchers wrote, they may not have delivered programming women could really use, given the context in which they would be operating.
In countries with starker gender inequality, "oftentimes women can't even get a loan without their husband signing," said Prof. Kaplan. "When accelerators go in, they can't treat it like a one-off intervention but need to also work on the ecosystems that surround the ventures."
Still, even in more egalitarian contexts, women entrepreneurs had lower acceptance rates into accelerators than men and that was true even when the accelerator prioritized women's empowerment, or where it had higher numbers of women on selection committees. Whether the selection criteria were biased or the female selectors were better at identifying which women entrepreneurs would benefit most is an open question for future research, Prof. Kaplan said.
As for women entrepreneurs, her advice is to treat accelerator applications as a two-way street: be just as choosy about which programs to commit to: "Focus on what specifically this accelerator would help me achieve and whether it's a match from your side too."
The study was published in Strategic Management Journal .
Bringing together high-impact faculty research and thought leadership on one searchable platform, the Rotman Insights Hub offers articles, podcasts, opinions, books and videos representing the latest in management thinking and providing insights into the key issues facing business and society. Visit www.rotman.utoronto.ca/insightshub .
