Despite the rapid growth of women in entrepreneurship and the economic importance of female entrepreneurs, there remains a substantial gender gap in entrepreneurship. We theorize that this disparity may stem from how collegiate entrepreneurship programs are marketed through website language, where language that aligns with gender-based stereotypes may discourage women from developing entrepreneurial intentions.
Across two studies (N = 117, 355), we use computerized test analysis and a randomized experiment to examine the presence of gender bias in collegiate entrepreneurship programs.
Our research reveals that university website language reflects significant bias toward agentic language and substantive patterns of association between specific language used in digital communications and gendered pronouns, indicating gender inequality in the program and gender representation. The experimental results demonstrate that these linguistic patterns significantly influence students’ attraction to entrepreneurship programs, with gender-based preferences for agentic versus communal language.
We offer novel empirical evidence of how linguistic patterns in entrepreneurship education contribute to gender disparities through key findings: (1) university entrepreneurship programs use significantly more agentic than communal language in their communications, (2) this language pattern creates systematic gender differences in program selection, and (3) balanced linguistic approaches using mixed agentic and communal language can mitigate these gendered preferences. These findings provide concrete evidence for how institutional communications may perpetuate gender gaps while offering practical strategies for fostering inclusivity in entrepreneurship education.
