Women are underrepresented in startups, but research on “joiners” – non-founder employees attracted to startup work – offers limited explanations for why such underrepresentation occurs and how it persists. We argue that, even among joiners, women are less interested than men in applying to startup jobs and that this gender gap is associated with differential reactions to information about the gender composition of prospective employers. We analyze unique field data obtained from a job-matching mobile-application platform for startups, finding the hypothesized gender gap and showing that women, but not men, are sensitive to information about organizational gender composition, especially for startups signaling diversity debt – i.e., no or only a token representation of women. A preregistered experiment further reveals that women’s identity threat concerns mediate these effects. Gender disparities in startups are reproduced in a vicious cycle as existing underrepresentation deters women from applying. Our findings have implications for research and practice concerning joiners, the underrepresentation of women in entrepreneurship, and startups’ ability to shape the gender composition of their applicant pools.

中文翻译：

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发出多样性债务信号：初创企业的性别构成和加入者兴趣中的性别差距

女性在创业公司中的代表性不足，但对“加入者”（被创业工作吸引的非创始人员工）的研究对为什么会出现这种代表性不足以及它如何持续存在提供了有限的解释。我们认为，即使在新员工中，女性对申请创业工作的兴趣也低于男性，而且这种性别差距与对潜在雇主性别构成信息的不同反应有关。我们分析了从初创公司的工作匹配移动应用平台获得的独特现场数据，发现了假设的性别差距，并表明女性而不是男性对有关组织性别构成的信息很敏感，特别是对于表示多样性债务的初创公司——即，没有或只是象征性地代表女性。一项预先注册的实验进一步表明，女性的身份威胁担忧调节了这些影响。初创企业中的性别差异在恶性循环中重现，因为现有的代表性不足阻碍了女性申请。我们的研究结果对有关加入者、女性在创业中的代表性不足以及初创公司塑造其申请人群体性别构成的能力的研究和实践具有影响。