Words that exclude: gendered verbiage as a mechanism of entrepreneurial inequality
研究分析了创业文本中男性化用语远多于女性化用语的现象，并通过实验发现使用男性化语言描述的企业获得更高评价和认知合法性，揭示了语言如何加剧创业中的性别不平等。
Gender inequality persists in entrepreneurship, yet the role of language in shaping entrepreneurial evaluations remains poorly understood. Drawing on social role theory and social dominance theory, we examine whether gendered verbiage appears in entrepreneurship texts and how such language influences new venture assessments. Using mixed-method design, we analyse popular press articles, academic research publications, and teaching cases, and conduct an experiment assessing new venture evaluations. Across all text genres, we find that masculine wording significantly outweighs feminine wording, regardless of industry gender-typing. Experimental results show that ventures described using masculine language are evaluated more favourably, perceived to have greater long-term growth potential, and granted higher cognitive legitimacy than those described with feminine language. These effects hold irrespective of the entrepreneur’s gender. Together, our findings reveal a linguistic mechanism through which gender inequality is reproduced in entrepreneurship and highlight how seemingly neutral texts can systematically advantage ventures aligned with masculine norms.