Publications

9. Women’s Approachability Premium in Sales: A Field Experiment among Microentrepreneurs

Accepted for publication at Organization Science 

Solène Delecourt, Laura Doering and Odyssia Ng

8. People Prefer to Negotiate with Women, Even When Outcomes Are Identical and Gender is Unknown

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 123 (26) e2523202123, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2523202123 (2026).

Charlotte H. Townsend, Laura J. Kray, Solène Delecourt

7. The Uneven Impact of Generative AI on Entrepreneurial Performance

Management Science, 2026

Nicholas G. Otis, Rowan Clarke, Solène Delecourt, David Holtz, Rembrand Koning

Also see: How AI Helps the Best and Hurts the Rest, Sloan Management Review (2026)

5. Delecourt, Solène. "The effect of relieving time constraints on the business performance of women-owned businesses: A field experiment". Research Policy,  54, no. 7, (2025): 105231.

4. Guilbeault, Douglas, Solène Delecourt, Tasker Hull, Bhargav Srinivasa Desikan, Mark Chu, and Ethan Nadler. "Online images amplify gender bias." Nature 626, no. 8001 (2024): 1049-1055.

3. Grace Hart, Chloe, Charlotte H. Townsend, and Solène Delecourt. "Who Believes Gender Research? How Readers’ Gender Shapes the Evaluation of Gender Research." Social Psychology Quarterly (2024): 01902725241234855.

2. Delecourt, Solène, and Anne Fitzpatrick. "Childcare matters: Female business owners and the baby-profit gap." Management Science 67, no. 7 (2021): 4455-4474.

1. Chatterji, Aaron, Solène Delecourt, Sharique Hasan, and Rembrand Koning. "When does advice impact startup performance?." Strategic Management Journal 40, no. 3 (2019): 331-356.

Link to my Google Scholar

Link to reproducibility files for published papers

Videos summarizing my work: 

Papers in progress

Which Ideas Attract Workers? Gender and Labor Supply in Startups

Revise & Resubmit at Management Science

 Nominated for Best Conference Paper Award at the Strategic Management Society Annual Conference 2023

Nominated for Research Methods Paper Prize at the Strategic Management Society Annual Conference 2023

Which startups can attract the talent they need to grow? We argue that worker preferences over which problems to solve shape labor supply to early-stage firms. In male-dominated labor markets, startups focused on women may struggle to recruit, especially for critical, male-dominated roles like engineering and senior leadership. We combine observational data on over 52,000 U.S. high-potential startups with a pre-registered field experiment. Linking startups to over 2.5 million worker histories, we find that female-focused startups employ fewer workers: a one standard deviation increase in a startup's female-focus predicts 11% fewer male employees. To isolate worker preferences, we run a field experiment where we randomize the startup idea itself, thereby developing a new experimental paradigm to causally identify how the nature of an idea matters. We built a job-search platform recruiting real tech job seekers in a within-subject design, where each participant evaluates 15 startup ideas, each randomized to be more or less female-focused. Crucially, our experiment is incentive-compatible, because participants’ evaluations affect which real job postings our platform subsequently recommends to them. Male job seekers are 6.8 percentage points less likely to apply to female-focused startups than other startups, a 10% decrease from baseline. Offsetting the male penalty would require approximately $47,000 in additional yearly compensation. Our findings demonstrate that who benefits from an idea is an important nonpecuniary job attribute shaping talent acquisition, potentially helping explain why ventures serving women grow more slowly.

Solène Delecourt, Katelyn Cranney, Sahiba Chopra, and Rem Koning

Global Evidence on Gender Gaps and Generative AI Over Time

Revise & Resubmit at Organization Science

Generative AI has the potential to transform productivity and reduce inequality, but only if adopted broadly. In this paper, we synthesize evidence from 76 sources from over 100 countries and analyze web traffic data to show that gender gaps in generative AI use are nearly universal and persistent. Focusing on the 318,924 respondents from sources that report usage rates for both men and women, we estimate an AI adoption rate of 47.8% for men versus 39.3% for women, a relative gap of 22%. While this relative gap has shrunk over time, it has stabilized at roughly 16% since early 2025. These patterns hold in global web traffic data on the ten most visited AI tools. This data also reveals that women generally spend less time using AI and that the gaps are largest for frontier tools. Our findings are consistent with a view that as AI diffuses, the gap shrinks as women are exposed to and gain familiarity with AI, but that institutional, organizational, and social frictions will likely lead to persistent gaps in who uses AI.

Katelyn Cranney, Solène Delecourt and Rembrand Koning

Closing the Doors: Sexual Harassment and the Survival Rates of Women-owned Firms

Revise & Resubmit at Organization Science

This paper examines sexual harassment and economic outcomes in entrepreneurship. Using a unique panel dataset of 790 women-owned firms in Ethiopia tracked over five years, we relate sexual harassment experienced by business owners to firm performance. First, we document the prevalence of sexual harassment among women business owners. We find over 16% of the women in our sample reported having been harassed in the prior 12 months, including incidences of sexual proposals and inappropriate physical contact. We show that sexual harassment varies by business sector, as well as individual and firm characteristics. Findings suggest that experiencing sexual harassment is negatively associated with the economic returns of women business owners over time. Women entrepreneurs who report having experienced sexual harassment are 37% more likely to close their businesses five years later, despite initially earning higher business profits. Firm closure is associated with lower subsequent earnings, suggesting exit is not driven by better employment opportunities. Our findings suggest that gender-based safety constraints may distort firm dynamics and women’s economic achievement.

Solène Delecourt, Sreelakshmi Papineni. Niklas Buehren, Salman Alibhai

Equalizing business characteristics can close the gender gap in micro-business performance 

Revise & Resubmit at the Strategic Management Journal

Women-owned businesses earn less than men-owned businesses worldwide, particularly among small firms in developing countries. One potential explanation for this gap is that female business owners may generate lower returns for a given business compared to their male counterparts. If there is indeed a gender gap in business returns, then the gender performance gap could be attributed to two potential factors: differences in the owner's human capital, or female-led businesses facing constraints in market demand. To test whether women have lower returns than men, we conducted a pre-registered field experiment where we equalized business characteristics for men and women, including inventory, hours, setup, and location. Specifically, we created our own businesses in real markets. We set up pairs of market stalls in three different markets and supplied them with identical goods. We then recruited experienced sellers from other local markets and randomized them to our stalls. Prior to our experiment, we found that men earned at least 50% more than women. But men and women also differed in various characteristics, such as women having lower levels of education and operating smaller businesses. Our experimental results demonstrate that equalizing business characteristics reduces the gender gap in business performance to zero. This indicates that the gender gap in business performance is not solely rooted in differences in returns. Instead, our findings suggest that men and women have the potential to achieve equal returns on business resources. 

Solène Delecourt and Odyssia Ng (World Bank)  

Firm location, childcare, and the gender profit gap

Revise & Resubmit at the Strategic Management Journal

Gender inequality is ubiquitous, including among small business owners in developing countries, which constitute the majority of businesses worldwide. To understand inequality in business performance, research has primarily focused on improving the performance of existing firms by providing capital, advice, or training. These strategies often increase the performance of male-, but not female-owned, firms. In this paper, we explore whether gender differences in a business' initial conditions can help explain this puzzle. If men and women start different kinds of businesses, and those initial choices affect profitability but are hard to change ex-post (are ``sticky"), this may limit potential profitability. To answer this question, we use rich quantitative data from a representative sample of 3,077 businesses in Kenya. In this context, women make 47% fewer profits than men. We find that women tend to locate their businesses in less profitable locations. While firm profits grow with the distance from home, women are more likely to locate their businesses close to home. Using census data of all firms in the study area, we find that male entrepreneurs locate in places with less competition. Male business owners are over five times more likely to be a monopolist in their sector within a specific radius than women. Though sector and location are important for profits, the majority of owners do not update these initial decisions after founding their business: in the two years preceding our study, only 7% of entrepreneurs changed either sector or location. Our findings suggest that these sticky conditions are more binding for women with greater childcare responsibilities than for men or other women. Our results point to the importance of initial conditions in perpetuating the gender gap among small firms in developing countries.

Solène Delecourt, Anne Fitzpatrick, Layna Lowe, Anya Marchenko 

Work in progress

The effect of AI Interviewers on gender gaps in hiring: Large-scale experimental evidence

Solène Delecourt, Brian Jabarian, and Luca Henkel

Women's advantages in economic transactions, invited submission to Research in Organizational Behavior

with Laura Doering and Charlotte H. Townsend