Female entrepreneurs received an 8% higher rate of interested replies

Hmmm. From Gender, Race, and Entrepreneurship: A Randomized Field Experiment on Venture Capitalists and Angels by Will Gornall and Ilya A. Strebulaev. From the Abstract.

We study gender and race in high-impact entrepreneurship within a tightly controlled random field experiment. We sent out 80,000 pitch emails introducing promising but fictitious start-ups to 28,000 venture capitalists and business angels. Each email was sent by a fictitious entrepreneur with a randomly selected gender (male or female) and race (Asian or White). Female entrepreneurs received an 8% higher rate of interested replies than male entrepreneurs pitching identical projects. Asian entrepreneurs received a 6% higher rate than White entrepreneurs. Our results are not consistent with discrimination against females or Asians at the initial contact stage of the investment process. Our experimental design is unable to capture discrimination at subsequent stages. We show an overall high rate of interested replies to cold pitches, which should give hope to budding entrepreneurs without strong networks.

I strongly dislike these (necessary?) deceit methodologies. And I am surprised at the strong effect size.

But . . . I do think that the standard received wisdom that there is massive overt systemic discrimination against women and races is both wrong and misleading. Lots of particular discrimination based on particular circumstances or particular individuals but not the systemic stuff.