Girls With Impact report finds women score high in college venture competitions

Although women account for only 17.8 percent of the participants in college venture competitions, they win the greatest amount of prize money, according to a report titled “The Entrepreneurship Talent Gap” that was released by the Greenwich-based nonprofit Girls with Impact.

The report analyzed college venture competitions over the past five years and found that a lopsided disparity in female participation, more than half of the winning teams had at least one woman as a team founder, while 60 percent were solely founded by a woman and 40 percent had a woman as its chief executive. Among the teams to earn cash prizes for first, second and third place finishes, 53 percent had a woman founder and 35 percent had a woman as chief executive.

“The bottom line: it pays to have women on your team,” said David Noble, executive director of the Entrepreneurship & Innovation Consortium at the University of Connecticut and co-author of the report. “Too many biases exist with the assumption that women aren”™t as good as men. This is another nail in the gender bias coffin.”