Research on resource acquisition for women entrepreneurs argues that there is a “double penalty” faced by women when they develop products and seek funding: a structural one associated with being a woman (versus a man), and behavioral one, for acting in ways consistent with stereotypes of women versus men seeking funding. We investigate the possibility of a third penalty, one associated with AI use, a novel technology for augmenting entrepreneurial knowledge and activities but also of debated legitimacy. We do so in the context of science, technology, engineering and management (STEM) product development and commercialization. In that context novelty is prized and female entrepreneurship encouraged, particularly by government-related funding agencies, making it a conservative test of the triple penalty possibility. In our university based experiment, we found some evidence of all three penalties for women STEM entrepreneurs, and of evaluator effects. However, the woman STEM entrepreneur sometimes earned more - or were penalized less - than the male. In the field experiment with the government funding unit for the pitched products, we found that AI use itself was punished for both men and women science team members pitching with it for seed-funding, but being a woman and/or being evaluated by man as a panel member did not make a large direct difference, rather the products’ characteristics did. Our research contributes to research on women STEM entrepreneur resource acquisition in the technology sector as well as to work on pitching. Our work also has secondary contributions to burgeoning research on the use of generative AI as an entrepreneurial tool.
