Male Investors Aren’t the Only Ones Biased Against Female Entrepreneurs

In a recent Wall Street Journal column, John Greathouse argued that female entrepreneurs might hide their gender when seeking fundraising. This article generated a firestorm of criticism, leading Greathouse to apologize for his comments.

While Greathouse’s op-ed wasn’t a great column and deserved criticism, the negative reaction to it missed an important insight. The source of the problem is not biased men, it is biased investors. Greathouse, in fact, quoted Renee Rottner at the University of California Santa Barbara who rightly explained, “studies find that the evaluator’s gender has little effect — women and men are equally biased in their judgments against women.”

Male Investors Aren’t the Only Ones Biased Against Female Entrepreneurs