It is a common complaint among women that only attractive females get ahead in the workplace and that their careers can fade with their looks.
However a new study has shown that, in fact, it is men who should be more concerned.
Being good looking helps a man in businesses, but appears to have little impact on whether women succeed.
A study by Harvard University found that investors were more likely to put money into ventures if the man making the pitch is handsome.
However, pretty female entrepreneurs were no more likely to be successful than less attractive ladies.
The findings, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also suggest there is a glass ceiling for women in the corporate world because backers prefer presentations from men.
Dr Alison Brooks, of Harvard Business School, said: "We identify a profound and consistent sex gap in entrepreneurship - a central path to job creation, economic growth and prosperity.
"Investors prefer entrepreneurial pitches presented by males compared with pitches presented by females - even when the content of the pitch is the same.
"Attractive males are particularly persuasive whereas physical attractiveness does not matter among female entrepreneurs.”
The researchers said that female entrepreneurs faced an uphill struggle to be taken seriously, which was why they were under-represented in the entrepreneurial economy.
In Britain just four FTSE 100 companies have women chief executives.
"Moreover the power of male attractiveness to persuade evaluators to select one pitch over another suggests entrepreneurial opportunities may also be unevenly distributed even within the male population,” added Dr Brooks.
Investors consider business experience and proposals while making decisions but researchers wanted to know if entrepreneurs' gender and physical attractiveness play a part.
They recruited 60 experienced and affluent backers to view video recordings of 90 randomly-selected verbal business pitches made by entrepreneurs from various sectors at three entrepreneurial contests in the US.
Investors were asked to rate the looks of the entrepreneurs and comment on the pitch.
Researchers found that men who were deemed good looking were 36 per cent more likely to be successful than those viewed as unattractive. However there was no difference for women.
In a separate study they asked investors to listen to the same pitches delivered by a man or a woman.
“We found that male-narrated pitches were rated as more persuasive, logical and fact-based that were the same pitches narrated by a female voice,” the authors concluded.
“This effect is moderated by male physical attractiveness. Attractive males were particularly persuasive, whereas physical attractiveness did not matter among female entrepreneurs.”
In 2011 a Government survey found that the growth in the number of female entrepreneurs had stalled and that the numbers declined the more successful the ventures they set up became.
It discovered that just 14 per cent of small and medium-sized firms are women-led, the same as in 2007.
While 21 per cent of start-ups in 2010 involved female founders, the proportion fell to 13 per cent for small firms employing more than 10 people and only eight per cent of all medium-sized companies.