Getting Funded, But Not Equally Funded: The Role of Gendered Language in Access to Funding and Depth of Funding in Technology Crowdfunding

Words carry connotations: signaling warmth or ambition, care or confidence, which consequently shapes how crowdfunding pitches are perceived. Building on debates about bias in entrepreneurial finance, the paper examines the interplay of gendered language and founder gender in reward-based crowdfunding. A dataset of 671 technology-based reward crowdfunding projects provides the empirical basis. The Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software is used to quantify communal (feminine) and agentic (masculine) expressions in campaign texts. Logistic and linear regression models assess their associations with funding access and depth of funding, while the founder’s gender serves as a moderating variable. The results reveal that communal language is generally associated with lower probabilities of funding access and lower depth of funding. However, for female-led campaigns, communal language is related to a reversal of the previously negative relationship with funding access probability, while the disadvantage in depth of funding; i.e., lower amounts pledged, persists. In contrast, the use of agentic language by women remains related to lower probabilities of funding access and lower depth of funding in technology-oriented crowdfunding campaigns. This paper extends crowdfunding research by highlighting how language interacts with founder gender in shaping performance. It also applies role congruity theory to an online entrepreneurial finance context, showing that the alignment or misalignment between linguistic style and gender expectations influences funding outcomes. The insights are relevant for scholars examining bias in entrepreneurial contexts, as well as practitioners crafting campaign narratives. The evidence underscores the role of language-based stereotypes in shaping perceptions of female founders and the need for greater awareness of such biases on crowdfunding platforms.