One explanation for why men are far more likely than women to start new ventures is that women have higher levels of humility and lower susceptibility to hubris, according to research by Venkat Kuppuswamy at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School and Ethan R. Mollick at Wharton. Using a data set of founders who have launched multiple crowdfunding campaigns, they found evidence that women are less likely than men to engage in entrepreneurship when faced with low-quality founding opportunities (a sign of lower hubris) and when faced with high-quality opportunities (a sign of greater humility). While decreased hubris benefits women individually, it disadvantages women as a group, as it leads to 23.2% fewer female-led foundings in their sample than would have occurred if women were as immodest and overconfident as men, the authors say.
Source: Hubris and Humility: Gender Differences in Serial Founding Rates
