Gender diversity in European DeepTech Accelerator Programmes

Over the years, women have become a significant part of the workforce, but they had to overcome a lot of barriers and challenges to succeed in their career development. The barriers that they are faced with have been widely acknowledged, urging researchers and practitioners to focus on identifying ways to minimize gender inequality. Up until now, the employment context has received most attention. Yet, there is evidence that this is also the case for the entrepreneurship domain. Even though, in the last few years women are more actively pursuing entrepreneurship, many challenges are still at place. Specifically, gender bias, limited government support and limited funding make entrepreneurship harder for women than for men. Thus, several actors of the European entrepreneurship ecosystem (such as incubators and business accelerators) are trying to eliminate this gap, by promoting specific funding programs, events, and policies. However, whether these strategies do effectively support women in entrepreneurship remains unclear. The objective of our study is to underscore the potential of European DeepTech Accelerators to foster a genderneutral environment. The study took place among 49 European business accelerators, from 20 different European countries as a part of the EU funded project entitle ‘Acceleraction’1. Measuring gender inequality both in terms of the percentage of women (co)-founders in their portfolio and percentage of invested start-ups with a woman as a (co)-founder, revealed that most of the accelerators still exhibit high or moderate gender inequality. Only few of them run exclusive programs and provide support adapted to women entrepreneurs. Additionally, accelerators with moderate to high success rates for startups led or co-led by women seem to use similar communication strategies to those used by accelerators with lower success rates. Apparently, accelerators which run activities tailored to women entrepreneurs, showcase significant differences in their provisions, requests, team composition and communication strategy. The study reveals that gender inequality is still apparent in many European DeepTech accelerators. However, those with tailored programs for women entrepreneurs show significant differences in their practices. This suggests that customized activities and targeted communication strategies are crucial for effectively supporting women in entrepreneurship.