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The few women in entrepreneurial leadership roles also have to deal with negative societal perceptions of their jobs. According to data from a 2015 Pew Research Center survey, 43% of Americans believe that the U.S. is not prepared to hire women for top-tier executive positions. A relatively smaller, but still significant, number of Americans (23%) believe that women don’t have the time to hold an executive position, given their “family responsibilities”. [http://www.citylab.com/work/2015/09/where-can-female-entrepreneurs-find-the-most-success/406987/]
The American public's generally negative perception of women in entrepreneurship presents itself institutionally as well. Even though female founders perform equal to or better than their male counterparts when raising money online, only 10 percent of startups which raised Series A last year had female founders. 90% of today's venture capital funds never see a female founder. [http://www.inc.com/lisa-calhoun/30-surprising-facts-about-female-founders.html] Texas claims the worst record of supporting women seeking venture capital. Last year, 42 Texas startups got Series A rounds, yet not a single startup had female founders. In terms of venture capital structure, ninety-four percent of decision makers at venture capital funds are male, and 90% of today's venture capital funds never see a female founder. Among chief executives of S.&P. 1500 firms, for each woman, there are four men named John, Robert, William or James. [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/upshot/fewer-women-run-big-companies-than-men-named-john.html?_r=2] But venture capital firms with women partners are more than twice as likely to invest in companies with a woman on the executive team and three times as likely to invest in companies with women CEOs.
Though at first glance women-owned business growth seems striking, the numbers are deceptive in that their shares of revenue and employees are in single digits. Furthermore, women who do go into entrepreneurship face societal disapproval of their actions, with a plurality of Americans believing not only that the country is not prepared to hire women to executive positions, but also that women are incapable of holding these positions due to their family responsibilities. Further, women get start-up capital for their companies 2-3 times as often from women-led VC funds, but only 6% of decision makers at VC funds are women. It's no wonder women are vastly underrepresented in this field.
