Here is a recent study on the topic that I think is very relevant:
Gender, Race, and Entrepreneurship: A Randomized Field Experiment on Venture Capitalists and Angels (Gornall and Strebulaev)
We sent out 80,000 pitch emails introducing promising but fictitious start-ups to 28,000 venture capitalists and business angels. Each email was sent by a fictitious entrepreneur with a randomly selected gender (male or female) and race (Asian or White). Female entrepreneurs received an 8% higher rate of interested replies than male entrepreneurs pitching identical projects. Asian entrepreneurs received a 6% higher rate than White entrepreneurs. Our results are not consistent with discrimination against females or Asians at the initial contact stage of the investment process.
However, it does seem pretty applicable to EA. The EA community is in many ways similar to the VC community:
Similar geographies: the Bay Area, London, New York etc.
Similar education backgrounds.
Both involve evaluating speculative projects with a lot of uncertainty.
Similarly to the studies discussed above, this finds that people are biased against white men.
(I have some qualms about this type of study, because they involve wasting people’s time without their consent, but this doesn’t affect the conclusions.)
Here is a recent study on the topic that I think is very relevant:
However, it does seem pretty applicable to EA. The EA community is in many ways similar to the VC community:
Similar geographies: the Bay Area, London, New York etc.
Similar education backgrounds.
Both involve evaluating speculative projects with a lot of uncertainty.
Similarly to the studies discussed above, this finds that people are biased against white men.
(I have some qualms about this type of study, because they involve wasting people’s time without their consent, but this doesn’t affect the conclusions.)