Gender Role Characteristics and Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy: A Comparative Study of Female and Male Entrepreneurs in China

Abstract

This study, based on Bem’s (1974) gender schema theory, investigates gender differences in and the relationship between gender role characteristics and entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) of 261 female and 265 male entrepreneurs in China. The results show that male and female entrepreneurs did not differ significantly in ESE or in masculine gender role characteristics, but differed significantly in feminine gender role characteristics. Examining four different stages in the entrepreneurial life cycle, we find that for female entrepreneurs, feminine characteristics had a positive influence on ESE in the searching and planning stages of entrepreneurship, and masculine characteristics had a positive influence on ESE in the searching stage. For male entrepreneurs, feminine characteristics had a positive influence on ESE in the searching and planning stages, and masculine characteristics had a positive influence on ESE in the marshaling and implementing stages. In addition, one feminine characteristic, “Friendly,” showed a positive association with male entrepreneurs’ ESE in the marshaling stage. Overall, the feminine gender role factor of “Friendly” and the masculine gender role factor of “Compete” played a greater role on ESE than other characteristics. Implications of the findings are discussed. This study contributes a new perspective to extant research on entrepreneurial self-efficacy and female entrepreneurship.

Intuition as Emergence: Bridging Psychology, Philosophy and Organizational Science

“…So the article has formed the basis of a number of subsequent influential literature reviews, conceptual contributions, and methodological and empirical works; drawing from it, scholars have differentiated intuition from related constructs (Hodgkinson et al, 2008(Hodgkinson et al, , 2009aSadler-Smith, 2010, 2015Salas et al, 2010;Blume and Covin, 2011;Akinci and Sadler-Smith, 2012, 2013, 2020Baldacchino, 2013Baldacchino, , 2019Baldacchino et al, 2015;Healey et al, 2015;Pratt and Crosina, 2016;Calabretta et al, 2017;Okoli et al, 2021;Sadler-Smith et al, 2021). In addition, the article has spread over psychology and neuroscience (Hodgkinson et al, 2008;Hogarth, 2010;Gore and Sadler-Smith, 2011;Hodgkinson and Healey, 2011;Ben-Soussan et al, 2020;Keck and Tang, 2020;Korteling and Toet, 2020;Li et al, 2020;Stephens et al, 2020;West et al, 2020;Muñoz-Cobos and Postigo-Zegarra, 2021;Reynolds et al, 2021;Yu et al, 2021;Zhang et al, 2021), as well as distant disciplinary domains, such as medicine and health sciences (Glatzer et al, 2020;Cameron and Singh, 2021;Chlupsa et al, 2021) or engineering and design (Cash and Maier, 2021;de Rooij et al, 2021;Paige et al, 2021;…”

Predicting the Entrepreneurial Behaviour of Starting Up a New Company: A Regional Study Using PLS-SEM and Data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor

“…The impact of personal values on self-efficacy has also been proved (H7). Li, Bilimoria, Wang and Guo [135] demonstrated this relationship in a comparative study in China regarding the values associated with the male and female gender. Finally, entrepreneurial self-efficacy is shown to be the best predictor of entrepreneurial intention and start-up behaviour, as Asimakopoulos, Hernández and Miguel [131], and Hussain, Nazir, Hashmi, Shaheen, Akram, Waseem and Arshad [132] have confirmed.…”

“…It is a motivational and adequate antecedent of entrepreneurial intention and behaviour regardless of the regional level [127,134]. Self-efficacy enables the entrepreneur to overcome challenges when starting up a business and use the negative feedback they receive to improve their performance in that process [127,135,136].…”

Gender differences in FinTech adoption: What do we know, and what do we need to know?

“…Further, a schema is a cognitive framework, essentially a network of connections, that helps structure and steer an individual's way of perceiving things (Bem, 1981). Likewise, Li et al (2020) examined that gender roles encompass societal expectations regarding behaviours and attitudes deemed suitable or fitting for individuals based on their biological or perceived gender. At the same time, individuals also acquire the ability to assess the adequacy of their gender schema.…”