Cultural Foundations of Female Entrepreneurship in Mexico: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

This paper analyses possible challenges and opportunities that Mexican female entrepreneurs face during the establishment of new enterprises. Based on in-depth interviews with female entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship experts, authors researched opportunities in the form of governmental and non-governmental institutional support, growing entrepreneurship, social awareness and women empowerment. However, lack of credibility, fear of vulnerability to criticism and social pressure are some challenges associated with gender egalitarianism. In such, the authors proved that Mexican culture impacts women in some ways more than the others. Institutional collectivism was the cultural dimension with higher positive impact on women, followed by gender egalitarianism with a neutral to positive impact and the power distance with a neutral influence on women.

Integrating The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership Model into Entrepreneurship Education

“…Gross Domestic Product will grow by 1.9% in Spain and 3% in Mexico (International Monetary Fund, 2018). To exacerbate the problem, the gender gap in both countries contributes to the persistence of long-standing social concerns, and economic stagnation (Hernandez Bark, Escartín, & Dick, 2014;Cuadrado, García-Ael, & Molero, 2015;Cavada, Bobek, Skoko, & Maček, 2018). Clearly, the social and economic environments in these countries are challenging and worth exploring as they relate to the expectations of the next generation of professionals.…”

“…This can affect managerial approaches, for instance, female business owners tend to delegate less than male business owners, placing more of the burden of running their companies on themselves (Junquera, 2011). Consistently, in Mexico, female entrepreneurs are more vulnerable to criticism, leading to higher risk aversion, due to long-standing gender typing (Cavada et al, 2018). This makes it harder for economies to prosper, which makes the need for more research evident.…”

Exploring antecedents of entrepreneurial intentions among females in an emerging economy

“…Role models and self-efficacy of individuals positively influence entrepreneurial intentions and, ultimately, the entrepreneurial activity (Chen et al, 1998;Krueger et al, 2000;Noguera et al, 2015). Several studies have associated with varying knowledge structures utilized by the entrepreneurs to analyse and make decisions, in foreseeing the opportunities and recognizing the threats and in the venture development (Gaglio and Katz, 2001;Kruger and Evans, 2004;Tsai et al, 2016;Cavada et al, 2018). Besides the aforementioned individual perceptions, demographic and economic situations tend to influence entrepreneurial intentions (Ahmad et al, 2014;Davidsson 1995;Liñ an and Santos, 2007;Khan et al, 2019a, b).…”

“…The determinants of women's entrepreneurship are becoming an important area of evaluation across the world (Parihar, 2017;Cavada et al, 2018;Noguera et al, 2015). Sharma (2020) assessed women's roles in society's development and emphasized the significant contributions made by women in the socio-cultural and economic development of the nation.…”

The more you value, the less you practice: a study on culture and managerial discretion

“…Their results demonstrated that culture has a greater influence on social and environmental in comparison to the economic practices. On the other hand, a study by Cavada et al (2018) used some of GLOBE's practices dimensions to examine what kinds of opportunities and threats female's in Mexico encounter when trying to establish a novel business. Their results showed that certain dimensions such as gender egalitarianism provide women with more opportunities to thrive.…”