Gender and Entrepreneurship as a Career Choice

Abstract

The gender gap in entrepreneurship has typically been understood through women's structural disadvantages in acquiring the resources relevant for successful business ownership. This study builds on resource-based approaches to investigate how cultural beliefs about gender influence the process by which individuals initially come to identify entrepreneurship as a viable labor-market option. Drawing on status characteristics theory, this study evaluates (1) how cultural beliefs about gender and entrepreneurship influence self-assessments of entrepreneurial ability, and (2) the extent to which such assessments account for the gender gap in business start-ups. Results suggest that women are significantly less likely to perceive themselves as able to be an entrepreneur and they hold themselves to a stricter standard of competence when compared to similarly situated men. This gender difference in self-assessments accounts for a significant portion of the gender gap in entrepreneurship after controlling for relevant resources. Additional analyses reveal that significant gender differences in self-assessed ability persist among established business owners.

Comparing Engineering and Business Undergraduate Students' Entrepreneurial Interests and Characteristics

“…Previous research indicates that women are less interested in entrepreneurship and have less involvement in entrepreneurial activities than do men 4 . Simultaneously, women tend to have lower selfassessments of their entrepreneurial ability, which may contribute to gender differences in entrepreneurship 5 . Understanding how measures of entrepreneurial interests and characteristics vary by gender among both engineering and business majors would bring new perspectives to the design of entrepreneurial programs and courses and potentially strengthen efforts to recruit women into entrepreneurial spaces.…”

The structure of the social capital of female entrepreneurs: A pilot study on selected regions of the Republic of Serbia and the Republic of Austria

“…Homophily can be based on one's status and/or values (Centola, Gonzáles-Avella, Eguílz, & Miguel, 2007), and it increases the likelihood of the interaction and communication within a group (Runyan, Huddleston, & Swinney, 2006). Networks of women are characterized by gender homophily 4 to a greater extent, meaning that most members of their social networks are of the same gender as they are (Verheul, & Thurik, 2001;Parker, 2009;Thébaud, 2010). McPherson, SmithLovin and Cook (2001: 422-424) state that tendencies toward gender homophily are present from the early developmental stage of children, resulting in gender segregated circles for boys and girls.…”

Unequal Hard Times: The Influence of the Great Recession on Gender Bias in Entrepreneurial Financing

“…In this framework, lenders may rely on the widely shared cultural belief that men generally are, and ought to be, more competent in the domain of entrepreneurship than are women (Ridgeway 2011;Thébaud 2010;Thébaud 2015). For instance, it is well established that individuals culturally associate successful entrepreneurship with stereotypically masculine attributes, like competitiveness, aggressiveness, and risk-taking (Bruni, Gherardi and Poggio 2004;Buttner and Rosen 1988;Gupta et al 2009).…”