This study examines the relationships among corporate political activity, gender, and borrower discouragement in credit markets, focusing on women-led firms worldwide. Data from 22,822 firms across 50 countries challenges the conventional belief that political activities invariably facilitate credit access. We show that women-led firms with political activities exhibit a higher rate of discouragement. We demonstrate that this outcome is not attributable to improved access to alternative financing but rather to the perception that obtaining credit is more challenging due to discrimination against women in the credit market, a result of the “know-how” gained through political activities. Our results remain robust across various robustness checks, including IV regression and matching analysis.