Green innovative start-ups and gender shares

This article examines the role of women in innovative start-ups in Italy, specifically focusing on young companies with a business commitment to sustainability. Within the population of more than 12'000 Italian new companies legally defined as innovative start-ups, we identify "green" firms through a web crawler search of sustainability-related keywords. We then analyze the prevalence of women among managers and shareholders in green companies, compared to normal ones. We find that women are neither over- nor under-represented in green companies on average, despite the fact that women operate more in companies with a social vocation, which are also on average more common within green companies. Our findings indicate that, once women surpass the barriers to entry in this highly innovative form of entrepreneurship, they do not favor differently eco-businesses over the others.