Motivation Factors for Female Entrepreneurship in Mexico

Abstract

A B S T R A C T Objective:The objective of this paper is to analyse motivation factors for female entrepreneurship in Mexico. In the proposed article, the authors discuss the factors which compelled women to start their enterprises in Mexico. Research Design & Methods:Based on in-depth interviews with female entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship experts, the authors show which factors motivated women to start their own business in Mexico. Findings: The study proves that women in Mexico are motivated by a combination of push and pull factors, where the majority of the factors are pull factors. The findings of the study help to conclude that female entrepreneurship development is influenced by different factors including the entrepreneurs' personal traits, social and economic factors. Due to their conservative traditional attitude, risk adverse tendency, and non-cooperation of family members, etc. women entrepreneurs are sometimes deterred to start a business in Mexico. Implications & Recommendations:It is necessary to raise the awareness of different factors that promote female entrepreneurship in Mexico. Governmental programmes which support female entrepreneurship, business incubators, and networking could be very helpful for women when starting their own business. Contribution & Value Added:The originality of this work lies in studying motivational factors for female entrepreneurship in Mexico. The Mexican society faces a big revolution towards female entrepreneurship. Based on the change of family structure and traditions, women nowadays are having more opportunities to develop as entrepreneurs. |Martha Cantú Cavada, Vito Bobek, Anita Maček INTRODUCTIONThe number of women who own businesses around the world has been increasing over time (Allen, Langowitz, & Minniti, 2006). Therefore, female entrepreneurship gains special attention in the literature in recent years. Papers focus mainly on the women entrepreneurship development, differences between entrepreneurship of men and women, factors affecting growth of women entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship career aspirations of educated women, etc. For example, in their research, Zapalska (1997), andBirley (1989) proved that there exist more similarities than differences between female and male entrepreneurs' psychological and demographic characteristics. Goduscheit (2011) on the other side suggested that there are more differences than similarities between the genders. Croson and Gneezy (2009) proved that women may be more risk averse than men. Furthermore, many studies conclude that women are both more risk-averse and less competitive than men (e.g. Croson & Gneezy, 2009;Bönte & Piegeler, 2012;Wagner, 2007;Verheul, Thurik, Grilo, & van der Zwan, 2012). According to Kelley, Singer and Herrington (2016), women would commonly engage in the topic of entrepreneurship less frequently than men, nevertheless when women do so, they normally do it out of a necessity rather than an opportunity. The objective of this paper is to analyse motivation factors for female entrepreneur...

The Motivations of Women Entrepreneurs in the Tourism Industry

“…Push factors usually emphasize the negative conditions leading to entrepreneurship. Freedom, independence, self-realization, success, targets, job satisfaction, social objectives, wealth, and entrepreneurship energy are counted among the pull factors (Cantú Cavada, Bobek, & Maček, 2017). Being independent and free are especially the primary pull factors (Nandamuri, 2013).…”

On the Relationship between Economic Dynamics and Female Entrepreneurship: Reflections for the Visegrad Countries

“…The gender gap is also perceived as the result of gender inequality and discrimination against women (Estrin and Mickiewicz 2011;Berger and Kuckertz 2016), or occupational female segregation (Damelang and Ebensperger 2020), which reduces their entry to entrepreneurship. The rather conservative and traditional perception of a woman in society may, however, be perceived as a kind of risk, and the lack of support and cooperation from society members deters entrepreneurial women from starting a business (Cantú Cavada et al 2017). Women are also influenced to become entrepreneurs by both necessity-driven factors, such as unemployment (McGowan et al 2012;Ng and Fu 2018); and by opportunity-driven factors, such as the need for independence (Holmen et al 2011;Lawter et al 2016).…”

The gender-based attainment of education and female entrepreneurship: the European perspective

“…Part of the research focuses on factors influencing female entrepreneurship which actually impact entrepreneurs regardless of gender, and tries to recognize the differences in female and male reactions to them. Such examples can be found among both necessity-driven factors, where female are motivated to enter into entrepreneurship by an unfavourable situation in the labour market, such as unemployment, frustration and a lack of professional development (McGowan et al 2012, Cantú Cavada et al 2017Ng, Fu 2018); and among opportunity-driven factors, such as, for example independence, flexibility, job satisfaction (Holmen et al 2011;Lawter et al 2016), and better work-life balance (McGowan et al 2012). On the other hand, there are also researches which concentrate only on women-specific factors; for example, norms for and stereotypes about females (Kobeissi 2010;Pérez-Pérez, Avilés-Hernández 2016).…”