Does female representation in top management teams increase support of women-led businesses?

In view of growing attention to unintended consequences of seemingly beneficial gender equality practices, we investigate whether and when female representation in top management teams (TMTs) affect firms’ decisions about whether to support women-led businesses. Extending the social categorization framework, we argue that when women executives are the tokenistic minority, TMTs with more female representation are less likely to support women-led businesses; however, the negative effects can be reduced when the TMT has more politically neutral members or when they share prior employment affiliations. Our hypotheses are supported by a longitudinal panel dataset of investment decisions by 779 TMT members in 172 U.S.-based venture capital firms.