Sexism in start-ups: A bibliometric analysis of the current landscape and pathways for future

This study examines the assumption that sexism remains a structural and persistent barrier within startup ecosystems, disproportionately disadvantaging women entrepreneurs across funding, legitimacy, and leadership dimensions. Drawing on 340 publications indexed in Scopus over the past two decades, we employ bibliometric analysis including performance analysis, co-citation analysis, bibliographic coupling, and scientific mapping to systematically map the intellectual landscape of sexism research in start-ups. Using VOSviewer as the primary mapping tool, this study analyses 340 Scopus-indexed documents through four complementary bibliometric techniques: (1) performance analysis, which assesses publication and citation trends across authors, institutions, and countries; (2) co-citation analysis, which identifies the most foundational intellectual works; (3) bibliographic coupling, which clusters thematically related recent research; and (4) co-occurrence analysis of author keywords, which tracks the thematic evolution of the field over time. With 62 articles, 2022 was the most productive year. The United States and Sweden's Jönköping University are the most impactful country and institute, respectively. In a similar vein, Small Business Economics is the most productive journal and Organisation is the most influential journal. Moreover, “Exploring the dynamics of gender, feminism, and entrepreneurship: Advancing debate to escape a dead end?” is the most cited article. Five theme clusters of sexism research in start-ups have been discovered by the authors. In addition to identifying possible topics for further research in this area, this paper gives academics guidance and information on the current state of the literature on sexism at start-ups.