Picture the founder of a thriving start-up. Did a man immediately come to mind? 

The gender gap in entrepreneurship is wide and well-established. Male entrepreneurs not only outnumber their female counterparts, but women-led ventures attract less investment and less mentoring and support. 

The economic costs of this disparity are huge. If women started businesses at the same rate as men, global GDP could rise by three per cent to six per cent, according to a Boston Consulting Group analysis. 

Research shows that women entrepreneurs face extra barriers, including social bias, financial discrimination and limited networks. Given the high stakes, there’s growing interest in how to dismantle or mitigate them.

Entrepreneurship accelerators are one potential way to bridge the gap. “The hypothesis is that these boot camp-like programs can level the playing field by offering networking opportunities, mentoring, training and access to funding,” says Sarah Kaplan, a professor emerita of strategic management at the Rotman School of Management.

But do they really give women-founded companies a boost? Kaplan wanted to find out, looking at social innovation accelerators, an area that tends to attract more women. 

The answer: It depends. 

“The benefits varied based on an accelerator’s external and internal contexts,” says Kaplan, who co-authored the study published in the Strategic Management Journal with professor Nilanjana Dutt at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy. 

Using data from the Global Accelerator Learning Initiative at Emory University, the researchers analyzed 1,417 ventures from 65 countries that applied to 33 social innovation accelerators between 2013 and 2015. They classified each country’s level of egalitarianism using World Economic Forum measures of gender gaps in economic attainment, with the lowest-ranked including the Syrian Arab Republic, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the highest including Burundi, the United States and Sweden. And, they also looked at the features of the programs themselves, in particular whether they focused on women’s empowerment specifically or made efforts to include more women on the selection committees and in program delivery.

The pattern was clear: for women entrepreneurs, accelerators were more effective in gender-egalitarian countries — especially when programs focused on women’s empowerment. In less egalitarian contexts, participation had zero — or even negative — effects, even in programs aimed specifically at women.

To determine the impact of participation in the accelerators, the researchers looked at companies that were both accepted to and rejected from each program, comparing their financial performance before and a year after the program end. 
 
“We thought that this rich data would show that accelerators in general benefit women entrepreneurs relative to those that didn’t participate. But, surprisingly, it didn’t,” says Kaplan. 

What explains the mixed results? The researchers proposed several possible explanations.

One is a mismatch between the institutional environment and the accelerator. “Less egalitarian countries often don’t have economic ecosystems or social norms that are supportive of women entrepreneurs,” says Kaplan. “None of the training and support women receive in accelerators matters if you launch them into a society where they can’t get capital, for example, or their husbands don’t allow them to work outside the home.”

Also, many accelerators in these less egalitarian countries try to emulate the traditional masculine Silicon Valley model — focusing on networking at traditionally masculine activities, such as soccer and drinking, for example — rather than offering the tools and skills women in these environments need most. 

The takeaways for those leading the design or implementation of accelerators again depend on context. “There’s no one-size-fits-all model,” says Kaplan. “If you’re running an accelerator to empower women entrepreneurs in an egalitarian country, know that it’s effective and you shouldn’t back down, especially in environments that are cutting back on equity programs like the United States right now.” 

But she says those successful programs should take a hard look at their selection processes. The study found all accelerators were less likely to accept women-led ventures than men-led ventures.

For those in less egalitarian contexts, her advice is that you can’t run accelerators in a vacuum. 

“Think about how you can form partnerships for change in the broader ecosystem that would help women entrepreneurs, such as lobbying for women to get loans on their own or involving husbands in programming so they become more supportive of their wives doing entrepreneurial ventures.”

What about insight for women entrepreneurs themselves?

“Understand what different accelerators offer and make sure they’re a good fit with your current needs before you invest time and effort,” says Kaplan.

And she urges women in less egalitarian countries to be realistic about the limitations of accelerators. “The research clearly shows that these programs alone can’t fix the societal barriers holding women entrepreneurs back.”

Next, Kaplan would like to explore why accelerators accept women in far fewer numbers than men. “I think it’s important to get to the bottom of who’s applying and what the selection processes are. We showed women are doing well in these programs in the right environments. Why aren’t we selecting more of them?