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The dialectics of information and communication technologies (ICTs) entail their potential in fostering digital dividends and fomenting digital exclusion. Based on 165 personal interviews with women entrepreneurs of MSMEs in the Ganjam and Gajapati districts of the state of Odisha in India, this study considers the opportunities and challenges regarding the access and use of ICTs. The primary intent of the study is to explore the participants' views on the diversity of ICT use, the relevance of these technologies for their businesses, and the challenges they face while using the digital technologies. Deploying Amartya Sen's Capability Approach (CA) as the primary theoretical lens, this study documents the popularity of "new ICTs" among the respondents, the constraints they face in performing digital transactions, their views on digital exclusion, and the impact of local factors (language barriers and institutional support) on their digital appropriation. Based on these findings, the study emphasises the need for increased availability of business‐relevant content on ICT platforms, incorporation of ICT training in ongoing programmes, and explores ways of overcoming the language barriers and promoting effective use of digital payment applications. This study aims at enhancing the ICT‐related capability sets of women entrepreneurs in the underdeveloped sub‐regions of India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research Summary: In this study, we advance novel understandings of strategies that marginalized entrepreneurs use to overcome institutional bias and mobilize crucial resources. Using grounded theory, we analyzed qualitative interview data from 97 women entrepreneurs across Iran, India, and the United States to understand the source and nature of the institutional constraints they faced, the strategies they used to overcome these constraints, and the agency and legitimacy that ensued as a result. We found that marginalized entrepreneurs engaged in three focal strategies: family transmutation, ally activation, and enabler cooptation. We propose that these strategies enhance marginalized entrepreneurs' likelihood of securing needed resources, but with different consequences for their agency and legitimacy. We offer several contributions to entrepreneurial resource mobilization and institutional literatures. Managerial Summary: This study explores how marginalized entrepreneurs gain agency, legitimacy, and other resources in the face of institutional biases. Our findings from interviews with 97 women entrepreneurs in Iran, India, and the United States show that when marginalized entrepreneurs face biases from their families, they can use a family transmutation strategy to gain family support and enhance their agency and legitimacy. Furthermore, marginalized entrepreneurs who encounter constraints from non‐family members can use an ally activation strategy to alleviate these constraints and enhance their agency and legitimacy. Finally, we found that in the face of self‐constraints that marginalized entrepreneurs impose on themselves, the use of an enabler cooptation strategy may have an adverse effect on their agency and legitimacy, even though it may facilitate their temporary resource access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile marketing apps have been progressively employed as business gadget innovations in developing economies. Research has acknowledged a number of encounters between women entrepreneurs and innovation opportunities. One identified opportunity is the application of technology to enable women entrepreneurs' access to market information with ease. This paper reports the cocreation process of a mobile application contextualized to Tanzanian women entrepreneurs to facilitate access to market information for improving their business performance and livelihood. Our study employs design science research (DSR) strategy for the cocreation and codesign of the mobile application artifact. After evaluating in the wild the mobile application, the women entrepreneurs participating in the study reported that through the codesigned mobile phone app access to market information is facilitated, and their business and the networks could be expanded. The contribution of our paper highlights the benefits of employing codesign and cocreation in combination with DSR to achieve a meaningful and contextualized virtual platform for accessing market information and for business networks expansion through direct contact with target consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how female migrant entrepreneurs overturn disadvantage through social resourcing. We argue they are disadvantaged by the intersectionality of their identities; that social constructions and ensuing entrepreneurial expectations are a poor fit with their ascribed identity, that they are marginalised by their 'otherness'. However, entrepreneurship is not only socially situated, but also socially enacted. We studied their entrepreneurial social enactment and found they had used agency to mobilise their identity. The shared identity of marginality as cultural strangers fostered a sense of togetherness as social capital. In turn, this produced group social responsibility, a socialised obligation to help each other. The entrepreneurs used this intangible resource to first establish their businesses then as a platform for wider engagements. We found that when the entrepreneurial self became superimposed on intersectional identity, disadvantage almost disappeared. Respondents reported confidence in themselves through their entrepreneurial achievement, paradoxically empowered by a negative social identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent debates-like agenda 2030-emphasize that women are not just the potential beneficiaries of the sustainable development goals (SDGs), yet they are also active change agents in achieving them. This study used non-parametric techniques to investigate and compare the impact of three entrepreneur-supporting interventions-interest-free start-up credit, skill-development short courses, and information and communication technologies (ICTs) use-in lowering the impediments defying women entrepreneurs in Punjab-Pakistan. We identified 33 barriers and three groups of respondents based on intervention(s) availed. Mean score ranking analysis reveals 25 out of 33 barriers as critical in affecting women entrepreneurs in category one, whereas women entrepreneurs in category two and three are found to face 20 and 14 critical barriers, respectively. Furthermore, we used factor analysis to group these 25 critical barriers into five principal groups: (1) business management & marketing barriers, (2) gender & social barriers, (3) client and customer-related barriers, (4) public policy and governance barriers, and (5) innovation & knowledge-management barriers. Moreover, the study advances a comprehensive understanding of underlying grouped barriers to devise coherent plans and collaborative actions-involving local institutions, stakeholders, academia, and industry-for containing these snags and to better harvest the impacts of development initiatives. The study extends the existing literature on techno-economic disclosure, digital transformation and entrepreneurship, and sustainable knowledge management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An equitable distribution of economic benefits from the recent growth of e‐commerce in Pakistan requires inclusive adoption of formal digital marketplaces. The available literature and focused discussions reveal that most women‐led businesses rely on informal e‐commerce managed through social media applications and have incomplete and often incorrect information on the benefits and choices related to the formal platforms. To inform and motivate women‐led micro, small and medium enterprises, this study deploys an information treatment through a randomised control trial of 300 women entrepreneurs in large urban centres of Pakistan. Results show that women entrepreneurs were responsive to the information, as the treated businesses were 10 percentage points more likely to opt for formal e‐commerce than the control group. The study is policy relevant as the methodology allows simple and inexpensive replication to scale up the treatment for better business growth for women entrepreneurs in Pakistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines whether internet usage among micro and small enterprises (MSEs) could influence household membersʼ use of the internet in terms of intensity as well as usage for productive activities. Using longitudinal data from MSEs in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, covering the period before and during the COVID‐19 pandemic, the study finds that more intensive use of the internet by female entrepreneurs is positively associated with at least an 8 percentage‐point higher probability of internet use for school‐related purposes by household members. Findings from qualitative analysis indicate that female entrepreneurs who are intensive users of the internet are more effective in persuading their household members to accept use of the internet especially for purposes related to their domain of responsibilities, such as childrenʼs education. We argue that policymakers should focus on improving digital literacy among female entrepreneurs as an affirmative action policy to ensure they can enjoy the maximum benefits that digitalisation has to offer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability of businesses to adapt effectively to climate change is highly influenced by the external business enabling environment. Constraints to adaptive capacity are experienced by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) across sub‐Saharan Africa, regardless of the gender of the business owner. However, gender is a critical social cleavage through which differences in adaptive capacity manifest and in Africa most entrepreneurs are women. We conduct a systematic review to synthesize existing knowledge on differential vulnerability of female entrepreneurs in Africa to climate risk, in relation to their sensitivity to extreme climate events and their adaptive capacity. We synthesize this literature using a vulnerability analysis approach that situates vulnerability and adaptive capacity within the context of the wider climate risk framework denoted in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. In doing so, we identify gendered barriers and enablers to private sector adaptation and suggest women entrepreneurs face a "triple differential vulnerability" to climate change, wherein they: (1) are often more sensitive to climate risk, as a result of their concentration in certain sectors and types of enterprises (e.g., micro SMEs in the agricultural sector in remote regions); (2) face additional barriers to adaptation in the business environment, including access to finance, technologies, (climate and adaptation) information and supportive policies; and (3) are also often concurrently on the frontline of managing climate risk at household levels. Since various forms of inequality often create compounding experiences of discrimination and vulnerability, we pay particular attention to how factors of differential vulnerability intersect, amplify, and reproduce. This article is categorized under:Climate and Development > Social Justice and the Politics of DevelopmentVulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change > Institutions for Adaptation [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research Summary: Microfinance funds are often diverted to non‐business usage, which defeats the purpose of microfinancing. Our study adopts boundary theory along with role commitment to investigate how microfinance recipients' integration of work–family roles affects microfinance diversion. We also examine the impact of family involvement and socially imposed gender role differences in microfinance diversion. We analyze data from an 11‐wave survey in which grants were provided to microenterprise owners in Sri Lanka. Our findings indicate that work–family role integration and lower owner role commitment engender more microfinance diversion. In addition, family involvement weakens the effect of role commitment on microfinance diversion while gender influences microfinance diversion, depending on the nature of the duties within the family role. Managerial Summary Why would microfinance recipients divert funds from investing in their own business when such a diversion would make it more difficult for them to escape poverty? Using data from surveys in Sri Lanka, we find that in order to prevent microfinance diversion, it is important for microenterprise owners to draw a clear boundary between their work and family roles, while also being committed to their role as a microenterprise owners. In addition, owners should be cautious about involving family members in their businesses. We also find that patriarchal values for gender roles in the society may impact microfinance diversion. Specifically, compared to men, women entrepreneurs who feel more of a burden from household chores and childcare roles tend to divert more funds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research Summary: Although reward‐based crowdfunding is lauded for its promise to democratize funding for innovation, claiming innovation in campaign texts has an ambiguous link to crowdfunding performance. We draw from Expectancy Violations Theory (EVT) and, in a field study of 2,185 Kickstarter campaigns, find that innovation claims yield better fundraising performance for women than men, particularly in male‐stereotyped categories. An experiment did not identify the expected indirect effects of innovation claims on crowdfunding performance through ability trustworthiness. However, it revealed that women are perceived as more able when launching campaigns in male‐stereotyped categories, suggesting that EVT and ability perceptions may still play an important but unhypothesized role. We extend research on the role of gender in crowdfunding and strategic entrepreneurship and make several suggestions for future research. Managerial Summary: The value of making innovation claims in reward‐based crowdfunding is ambiguous, creating an unclear picture of how entrepreneurs should present new products on these platforms. In a field study of 2,185 Kickstarter campaigns, we show that female entrepreneurs benefit more from making innovation claims than their male peers, especially in male‐dominated categories. While we suggested that these effects occur due to differences in backers' perceptions of the entrepreneur's ability, this mechanism was not supported in an experiment. However, we found that women are perceived as more able when launching crowdfunding campaigns in male‐dominated industry categories. Taken together, our research suggests that in reward‐based crowdfunding, women might benefit from violating gender expectations when backers view these violations as either positive or ambiguous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research Summary: This study investigates whether there is a gender gap in the sale of patents by entrepreneurs and examines whether the personal wealth of female entrepreneurs can compensate for it. Using a sample of 107,697 independent inventors, we overcome the empirical challenge of measuring wealth through a novel approach that leverages Zillow data. We find strong evidence of a gender gap in patent sales, and find it poses a cruel irony for female entrepreneurs. While greater wealth of female entrepreneurs improves their likelihood of patent sale, increasing wealth simultaneously expands the gender gap, making female entrepreneurs increasingly worse off relative to male entrepreneurs except at high affluence. These results underscore the complexity of the challenges facing female entrepreneurs seeking to commercialize using patent sales. Managerial Summary: Are female entrepreneurs disadvantaged in monetizing their inventions, relative to male entrepreneurs? Our study, which examines invention commercialization through selling patents, suggests the answer is yes. We begin by evidencing the gender gap in patent sales, showing that female inventors are 41.7% less likely to sell a patent than male inventors. We then investigate whether an entrepreneur′s personal wealth—a financial asset that also represents valuable intangible resources like network connections and competency signals—can help to close it. We find that wealth is a double‐edged sword. Although greater wealth of female entrepreneurs improves their likelihood of patent sale, it can concurrently widen the gap, making them increasingly worse off versus male entrepreneurs. We offer concrete recommendations for closing the gender gap in patent sales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human development cannot occur without women's empowerment. Particularly in marginalized contexts lacking equal treatment between women and men, women's empowerment is conditioned upon their control of financial resources and activities outside their households' tasks, such as entrepreneurial activities. Such contexts have been experiencing the escalation of microfinance schemes of which women have been the main target group. While scholars generally agree on the opportunities that microcredit represents for microentrepreneurial activities, its effective impact on women entrepreneurship, and hence their empowerment, show contrasting results. We aim to contribute to this debate by conducting in‐depth semi‐structured interviews with female members of the group lending model of the microfinance institutions in Uttar Pradesh, northern India. The thematic questions of the interviews address, particularly, the social resources (social capital) and economic conditions underpinning the process of empowerment among women's members of peer‐group lending schemes. We find that social capital plays a crucial role for peer‐group lending to be successful in accessing financial resources and loan repayment. However, we detect the presence of empowerment only where a woman uses the outcome of these social capital resources to pursue her entrepreneurial activities and self‐determined goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the motives, challenges, and perspectives of women minority‐ in Kosovo, emphasizing the pharmacy sector. The aim is to identify women minorities' motives for entrepreneurship and challenges. A qualitative methodology is applied to the interviews of ten ethnic Turkish women entrepreneurs. The interview questions focus on their motives, moral and financial support, work–life balance, and other related issues. Findings show many challenges associated with minority women entrepreneurs related to the imbalance of life and work and the lack of government support as a form of facilitation for entrepreneurship. This study fills the gap in theoretical knowledge about women minority entrepreneurs by addressing motivations and challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, entrepreneurship has become a guiding principle of the thinkable, not just in economy, but also justice. Boosting entrepreneurship among women is a manifestation of this project, which a‐problematically links the call for equality with the activation of the economy. The standpoint usually taken in scientific and political debates assumes that, in the case of women, there is an incompatibility between gender norms and entrepreneurial subjectivity. Considering the performative nature of knowledge production, this article analyses how gender is (un)done through the problematization of women's entrepreneurial subjectivity by expert knowledge. To do so, it reviews a sample of the scientific literature of the past 10 years focused on the complex relations in place throughout these regulatory spaces. The authors identify three types of approaches (women facing entrepreneurship, the gender of entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurship of gender) and discuss the prevailing normative assumptions, as well as the political implications, through a gender and feminist lens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Female entrepreneurs in rural America are rarely studied, despite local economic context likely shaping their (self‐) employment choices. Development literature suggests entrepreneurship is most prevalent at the lowest and highest income levels, creating a U‐shaped relationship between economic development measured with per capita income on the x‐axis and the entrepreneurship rate (startups) on the y‐axis. At the county level in the United States, we find that female‐led startup rates vary with per capita income in the predicted U‐shape. Results provide support for place‐based entrepreneurship policy and highlight challenges women face while trying to contribute to the rural economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We measure the impact of an edutainment television programme specifically designed to promote entrepreneurship among young adult viewers in Egypt. We implemented a randomized controlled trial following a non‐symmetric encouragement design and using cheap scalable incentives to measure the impact of the intervention. While the impact of the show appears otherwise more limited, we find that the good performance of female contestants improved viewers'—in particular, men's—general perceptions of female entrepreneurs. However, despite the apparent difficulties faced by women in setting up a business, the show also led viewers to think that discrimination against women was not as important as they had previously believed, highlighting the possible distorting effect of media content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Private lodging', the letting of a room/rooms in their home by a resident householder, was widespread in Britain's Georgian towns and cities. Contemporary fiction, drama, prints and life‐writing reveal how observers and lodgers often took harsh, gendered attitudes to landladies. They were too attractive, or conversely too ugly, garrulous, mercenary. Lodgers, especially men, often expected a level of service that went beyond a commercial rental agreement: emotional support, company and nursing care, for example. This article uses a range of sources to examine these attitudes and then, reading between the lines, capture the viewpoint of the largely silent Georgian landlady. It uncovers a commercial market‐place of lodging in which middling‐sort women were routinely and skilfully engaged in paid work in the home beyond the provisioning and care of the affective nuclear family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of spirituality in management is of growing interest, not least because it is closely related to business ethics, and, thus, how businesses treat customers and employees. The topic, however, still needs some conceptual development, as well as empirical research, especially outside Western, Christian contexts. This qualitative research examines spirituality among women small business owners in Thailand. These women follow Kuan Im bodhisattva, a Buddhist role model teaching compassion and morality. In Jackson's terminology, this is an example of an Eastern, practice-oriented approach to ethics rather than (in his view) the somewhat theoretical wisdom-oriented approach common in the West. The nature of their spirituality and their treatment of customers and employees maps strongly to a servant leadership style. Servant leadership has occasionally been proposed as the style most closely associated with spirituality. In this context, it seems to be thoroughly intertwined, and highly concerned with ethical treatment of others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on information from a large sample of German researchers and using business ownership and nascent entrepreneurship as alternative indicators of academic entrepreneurship, we use mediation analysis to analyze the direct effects of researchers' entrepreneurship attitudes, age, gender, and citizenship as well as the related indirect influences. Industrial cooperation, industry consulting, and patenting are used as alternative mediator variables. Focusing first on the overall drivers of academic entrepreneurship, the results show differences in the drivers of business ownership and nascent entrepreneurship. With regard to age, we find positive and significant indirect effects; they are negative for females; and positive for German citizens. The identification of direct and indirect channels of influence on academic entrepreneurship is the main contribution of this work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the inter‐temporal and spatial variation in credit access to women entrepreneurs in the unorganized sector using two latest rounds of nationally representative datasets on unorganized enterprises in India. The study applies a cross‐sectional distributional check to identify the variations. Probit model with reference category and average marginal effects is used to determine the predictors of access to formal credit (FC). A robustness test has been performed using a pooled probit method. Results are discussed in line with relevant literature as well as empirical findings. The analysis confirms the existence of regional disparities in credit access to women enterprises. Factors like engagement in diversified activities and maintenance of accounting records being registered with relevant authorities have an important bearing on the probabilities to access FC. It is alarming to observe the marginal improvement over 5 years in the credit share of women‐owned unorganized enterprises. Policy shortcomings are discussed on the basis of inferential statistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Which individual‐level factors motivate women to become a social entrepreneur? To answer this question, we examined the direct impact of problem‐solving skills, networking ability, and entrepreneurial knowledge with social entrepreneurial intention. Furthermore, we tested the indirect effects of these three factors through self‐efficacy. The study hypotheses were tested using a sample of 234 Bangladeshi women. In this research, Smart PLS 3.0 has been used to assess the study hypotheses. Our findings confirmed a positive and significant relation among problem‐solving skills, networking ability, and entrepreneurial knowledge with social entrepreneurial intention. Moreover, our data confirmed that self‐efficacy mediates the relationship among problem‐solving skills, networking ability, and entrepreneurial knowledge with social entrepreneurial intention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notions of social entrepreneurship and social enterprise have been the emerging trends in the world today, specifically in developing countries. We draw on social network theory to explore causes and situations that encourage individuals to engage in social activities in an entrepreneurial manner. This article investigates the impact of business ties and political ties on SEIs and how gender influences the casual relationships. Linear regression is used to analyze the responses obtained from 300 general populations across three developing countries including Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. The findings show that business ties positively affect SEIs, but political ties are negatively related to SEIs. Furthermore, our results indicate that the gender influences both the positive impact of business ties on SEIs, which is greater for males, and the negative impact of political ties, which is stronger for females. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agriculture has traditionally been framed as men's work, while women's contributions to the sector have largely been rendered invisible. This article examines the emerging agricultural professional services sector, asking how a changing environment for agriculture may be disrupting traditional gender norms framing agricultural employment. Drawing together the literature in gender and agriculture, professional services and entrepreneurship and interviews with 22 women who have built businesses in agricultural professional services in Australia, our analysis identifies that a confluence of macro and micro activities are shaping new opportunities for women in agricultural employment. Through leveraging a changing industry environment, exercising agency, (valuing) local matters and communion, participants are disturbing traditional gendered patterns of agricultural employment. Our analysis highlights how, as participants build their businesses and demonstrate agency in a dynamic environment, they value the integrating, reconciling, and synthesizing they experience from supporting the flow of activities in their communities. In claiming their space in the changing landscape of agricultural professional services, they exemplify communion enriched by agency, and we see a tempered disruption of the gendered norms in agricultural employment. The article contributes to scholarship on agricultural professional work and identifies how historical patterns of employment and masculine privilege are being disrupted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An individual's gender may influence their behavioral preferences as males exhibited a significantly higher risk taking, openness to change, autonomy, and achievement tendencies. Interestingly, older females seemed to possess lower risk taking, creativity, and autonomy than the younger cohort of women entrepreneurs, while age had no influence on personality attributes of male respondents. An entrepreneur's personality preferences were uninfluenced by whether an established business is earning revenue or designed as a profit or nonprofit venture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the social capital of women entrepreneurs in contexts characterized by gender segregation between men's and women's trading spaces is underdeveloped. The literature on women's entrepreneurship and the marketplace in Pakistan is one such example. This article contributes to the literature on the social capital of female entrepreneurs from a critical perspective by drawing on an exploratory case study of women's entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial networks in the Malakand District of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Women's social capital was found to play a crucial role in the survival and expansion of their business activities by facilitating access to the men's trading sphere of the marketplace. It was also found that women exercise active agency in developing cross‐gender economic networks but do so in ways that do not overtly challenge social norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the issue of immigrant women entrepreneurship. It focuses on the emergence of new points of view on self‐employed migrant women and in particular their search for independence. With the support of qualitative research carried on in Italy, it will set out a typology of motivations and strategies to become self‐employed in which, besides a "family strategy" and an "independency strategy", a "mixed network strategy" also emerges. This last focuses on the role of mixed networks (with other foreigners and/or natives) not only in business management but also in the promotion of transnational social activities. Policies that support associations, creating opportunities for gathering and exchanging with local residents and improving the presence of immigrant women in local institutions, could have the side‐effect of increasing participation by immigrant women in self‐employment, not for lack of alternatives but as a path towards self‐fulfilment and empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the challenges and obstacles faced by female entrepreneurs in the cottage, micro, small, and medium enterprise (CMSME) sector in Bangladesh and shows that a combination of legislatory and regulatory reform can mitigate many of the issues that prevent women gaining from, and contributing to, this vital economic sector. Access to finance is found to be the greatest challenge faced by women in starting and operating CMSMEs in Bangladesh. This article explores the significant gender gap in access to formal credit, a gap that impacts negatively on the sector's growth and development. The article uses liberal feminist theory as a framework for analysis of the reforms. Analysis of data collected from banks and financial institutions on CMSME loans (2010–2018) shows that female entrepreneurs are treated significantly differently from men by financial institutions in Bangladesh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been an increased interest in women's entrepreneurship research due to the changing sociocultural conditions in the global marketplace. Despite this trend, there is still a lack of understanding about the role women entrepreneurs play in the internationalization process of firms. The aim of this article is to systematically review the literature on women's entrepreneurship and internationalization by examining the trends in the research. A bibliometric analysis is conducted on articles in the Web of Science databases to understand which researchers are publishing the most and how they are related to other researchers in the field. In addition, a content analysis of the articles from the bibliometric analysis is conducted that reveals three main clusters from the research: (a) epistemological position and gender, (b) cultural and social reasons for the creation of businesses, and (c) motivations, business characteristics, and performance. From the bibliometric and content analysis, implications for policy makers and future research directions for women's entrepreneurship and internationalization patterns are stated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This critical review of the literature on female entrepreneurship problematizes the metanarrative of economic growth and the mechanisms through which it both operates and is maintained. Central to this is the axiomatic 'underperformance hypothesis', which states that 'all else being equal, female entrepreneurs tend to be less successful than their male counterparts in terms of conventional economic performance measures' (Du Rietz and Henrekson (2000, p. 1). As an axiom, the truth of the 'underperformance hypothesis' is taken for granted, and thus it invisibly serves as a starting point, delimiter and interpretive lens for analysis in this field. While it remains invisible, the hypothesis will continue to reproduce the differences between male and female entrepreneurs, and thus the subordination of women to men in the realm of entrepreneurship. The review illustrates how, by associating females with underperformance, the persistent influence of the metanarrative of economic growth has been masked and the image of the female entrepreneur as problematic and inferior to her male counterpart has been reinforced. The authors argue that a postmodern feminist epistemology will destabilize both the metanarrative of economic growth, and the axiomatic 'underperformance hypothesis' it supports, thus opening up space for a heterogeneous understanding of (female) entrepreneurship. By questioning accepted knowledge about female entrepreneurs, the review sets the platform for the exploration of new research questions and a broad agenda for future research. Such an agenda is crucial in order to move future research beyond the pervasive influence of the metanarrative of economic growth and its attendant underperformance hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the effect of audit partner gender on the likelihood of issuing a modified audit opinion (MAO) across conditions in which the issuance of an MAO is warranted and/or that create incentives to report opportunistically at the audit‐partner level. We find that, after an audit partner switch, female audit partners are more likely to issue first‐time MAOs and MAOs generally and that female audit partners are more persistent in issuing MAOs. However, after correcting for self‐selection bias, we do not find an effect on the part of audit partner gender on the likelihood of issuing an MAO in the case of partner‐level opinion shopping, subsequently failing firms, or firms that are economically important at the audit‐partner level. This stands in contrast with the previous evidence regarding the effect of audit partner gender on going‐concern reporting. Overall, our study provides new evidence regarding the conditions that induce female audit partners to report more conservatively compared with male audit partners. The results imply that female audit partners report more conservatively if an MAO was issued in the previous year and if the audit partner has been switched. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 1990s, there has been investment in women's entrepreneurship policy (WEP) in Sweden, which continued until 2015. During the same period, Sweden assumed neoliberal policies that profoundly changed the position of women within the world of work and business. The goals for WEP changed as a result, from entrepreneurship as a way to create a more equal society, to the goal of unleashing women's entrepreneurial potential so they can contribute to economic growth. To better understand this shift we approach WEP as a neoliberal governmentality which offers women ‘entrepreneurial’ or ‘postfeminist’ subject positions. The analysis is inspired by political theorist Nancy Fraser who theorized the change as the displacement of socioeconomic redistribution in favour of cultural recognition, or identity politics. We use Fraser's concepts in a discourse analysis of Swedish WEP over two decades, identifying two distinct discourses and three discursive displacements. Whilst WEP initially gave precedence to a radical feminist discourse that called for women's collective action, this was replaced by a postfeminist neoliberal discourse that encouraged individual women to assume an entrepreneurial persona, start their own business, compete in the marketplace and contribute to economic growth. The result was the continued subordination of women business owners, but it also obscured or rendered structural problems/solutions, and collective feminist action, irrelevant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been suggested that entrepreneurship is a form of emancipation and social change for women. We adopt a more comprehensive view by considering micro‐emancipation at the level of both agency and identity of women entrepreneurs in patriarchal and Islamic societies. We borrow from organization studies literature to draw on the notions of the dynamic and ongoing process between dominators (i.e., men of the patriarchal family) and the dominated (i.e., women entrepreneurs). In this process micro‐emancipation and active obedience are intertwined. For this purpose, we contextualize the study in the United Arab Emirates, where men of the family regulate women's agency and identity. The men of the family are not only the gatekeepers of societal culture, but also the potential supporters for women to navigate the societal arrangements. By adopting an interpretive approach, we analyse the narratives of Emirati female entrepreneurs in their early stages of becoming an entrepreneur who engage in strategic (dis)obedience. The article contributes to the literature on micro‐emancipation in the context of gender and entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article analyses how the gendered and classed positions of migrant women explain the meanings of becoming an entrepreneur and the role of their spouses in their occupational trajectories. Using a translocational positionality approach, the article challenges the claim that women escape patriarchal domination by establishing their own businesses. The narratives of 35 Latin American women entrepreneurs in Spain reveal that becoming an entrepreneur is conditioned by class‐based ideas of masculinity and femininity. I argue that middle‐class Latin American immigrant women become entrepreneurs to promote their spouse's career advancement while conforming to class‐based norms of femininity. In contrast, lower class Latin American women view the business as a space of autonomy and occupational upward mobility that nevertheless also complies with working‐class definitions of femininity. The policy implications of these findings relate to making class aspirations central to the support of labour market integration and empowerment of migrant women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article examines 100 women and their enterprises in moshav-type co-operative rural settlements in the rural-urban fringe of Tel-Aviv metropolitan area, Israel, and analyses the catalysts and obstacles to development and expansion of such enterprises. Most of the businesses are small, in the personal and service sector, and based on experience in past employment. The majority are located in homes or unused farming structures and constitute the major source of household income. Major catalysts of development include the search for alternatives to waning farming income, self-fulfilment, and professional development; main obstacles are shortage of capital and lack of self-confidence in the ability to manage a business. The location is advantageous for fulfilling family obligations and saving costs, but problematic because of distance from central markets and intense local competition. The businesses play a crucial role in the survival strategy of rural households and help improve the quality of life and wellbeing in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We document strikingly similar gender differences in financial literacy across countries. When asked to answer questions that measure knowledge of basic financial concepts, women are less likely than men to answer correctly and more likely to indicate that they do not know the answer. Both young and old women show low levels of financial literacy. Moreover, women for whom financial knowledge is likely to be very important-for example widows or single women-also know little about concepts relevant for day-to-day financial decisions. The gender differences are present for very basic as well as more advanced measures of financial literacy. This is important because financial literacy has been linked to economic behavior, including retirement planning and wealth accumulation. Women live longer than men and are likely to spend time in widowhood. Thus, improving women's financial literacy is key to helping them prepare for retirement and promoting their financial security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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We estimate a dynamic model of employment, human capital accumulation-including education, and savings for women in the United Kingdom, exploiting tax and benefit reforms, and use it to analyze the effects of welfare policy. We find substantial elasticities for labor supply and particularly for lone mothers. Returns to experience, which are important in determining the longer-term effects of policy, increase with education, but experience mainly accumulates when in full-time employment. Tax credits are welfare improving in the U.K., increase lone-mother labor supply and marginally reduce educational attainment, but the employment effects do not extend beyond the period of eligibility. Marginal increases in tax credits improve welfare more than equally costly increases in income support or tax cuts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Findings from a large and growing body of entrepreneurship research offer insights for public policy and public officials and managers. Entrepreneurship policy is defined as measures undertaken to stimulate entrepreneurship in a region or country. The authors discuss generalizations from empirical research on three types of entrepreneurship activity that are vital for inclusive, sustainable economic growth: high-growth (stressing economic impact), female (inclusive impact), and social (sustainable impact) entrepreneurship. High-growth firms make up a small share of all entrepreneurial activity but create the majority of economic growth. Compared to their male counterparts, female entrepreneurs are fewer in number (one-third of all entrepreneurs) and tend to start ventures with lower financial capital and growth expectations. Social entrepreneurs generally have high levels of education and pursue social objectives, often remedying market failures with innovative solutions. For each entrepreneurship type, the authors provide a definition, empirical generalizations, and implications for public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigates the growth barriers of informal sector enterprises in India. The empirical analysis is based on the National Sample Survey Organization's unit-level data for three years, 2000-2001, 2005-6, and 2010-11. The results of the study reveal: proprietary and large firms survive and grow; enterprises managed by women are less likely to decline; inadequate power supply poses a severe growth obstacle to all categories of firms; and proprietary firms encounter capital shortage while large firms are constrained by the non-availability of raw materials. We do not find evidence of sub-contracting acting as an enabling factor in firm growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We find that the likelihood of a female CEO appointment increases with the proportion of female directors on the board. However, this positive relation is significant only in the subsample of firms where one of the directors is appointed CEO, and is insignificant in firms where the new CEO is not from the board. The results are consistent with the explanation that female directors constitute a supply of viable candidates for the CEO position, rather than female directors affecting the likelihood of female CEO appointments by interpreting noisy signals about the abilities of female candidates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) provide financial services to the poor and in many ways resemble both banks and non-profit organizations. Many MFIs target women because more women than men are poor, especially in rural areas. Studies show that women manage money differently from men and have different leadership styles. Thus, in credit unions and financial firms, female and male managers achieve different results. In microfinance, gender diversity on the board of MFIs is beneficial, and loans authorized by female loan officers have lower default rates. Motivated by these findings, we ask whether MFIs with a female Chief Executive Officer (CEO) are more efficient at serving the poor without jeopardizing financial sustainability. We adapt the banking approach to managerial (in)efficiency to account for the outreach and sustainability goals of the MFIs, and evaluate whether MFIs' outreach efficiency differs by the gender of their respective CEOs. We estimate a stochastic frontier cost function using the Battese-Coelli (1995) model and the "true" random effects estimators using panel data from over 250 MFIs. We find that MFIs with female CEOs have significantly higher outreach efficiency than MFIs with male CEOs. Similar results are found with a two-step stochastic frontier approach. Overall, the results suggest that promoting gender diversity at the top levels of MFI management is likely to have both social and financial benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on extensive qualitative data at a Mexican-owned multinational corporation, this case study investigates professional employees' perceptions of changes to a prohibitive work policy requiring women to quit working upon marriage and having children. Employees believed the policy change meant working women were valued employees, but how this translated into opportunity highlighted distinct views of the types of positions professional women could occupy at the company, reinforcing sex-segregated job allocation. Whereas women's narratives pointed to cultural resistance, men's narratives attributed the dearth of women in higher level positions to their lack of professionalism and commitment to work. The work policy change only guaranteed the right for women to work as the company modernized to fit the neoliberal demands of the global marketplace. Now women faced the challenge of turning that right into career advancement in a traditionally masculine-defined company. I argue that even with the policy change, gendered discourses on women in professional occupations constructed and maintained gender inequities in the workplace. This study contributes to the scholarly discussion on gendered discourses within the context of global restructuring by showing how mechanisms at work maintain gender inequity in the workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integrating risk, gender diversity and upper echelons literatures, we examine whether the presence of women in upper management (top management team ( TMT) and board of directors ( BOD)) and the tenure of TMTs and BODs are associated with the risk of lawsuits. An analysis of data from firms in the US retail industry shows that the presence of women in TMTs and BODs and the tenure of TMTs and BODs are negatively associated with legal risk, but longer tenured BODs with more women had a positive impact on lawsuits. Implications and suggestions for future research are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of skin color and its relationship to body (dis)satisfaction and self-esteem is critical to expanding upon the research that explores the intersection between body image and the sociocultural experience of women of the African diaspora. To this end, the relationships between skin color satisfaction, body dissatisfaction, and self-esteem were examined in a sample of 328 women of African descent. Results revealed a significant effect for ethnicity and employment status on body dissatisfaction, skin color satisfaction, and self-esteem. Follow-up analyses revealed that Afro- Caribbean women were the most satisfied with their body shape, biracial women were most satisfied with their skin color, and women who self-identified as professionals had the highest self-esteem. Implications for the findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a model of the stigmatization of flexible work based on status legitimation theory, we analyze the experiences of a sample of 54 mothers who 'opted out' of professional jobs. Qualitative text analysis reveals that features of women's workplaces are conducive to the creation and maintenance of flexibility stigma and bias and that women working flexibly are subjected to various forms of stigmatizing treatment, which plays a role in their decision to suspend their careers. We find limited evidence, however, that women perceive high levels of stigma and differential treatment as reflecting bias or prejudice. Instead, the majority appears to accept the legitimacy of professional time norms and view their treatment as justifiable. We identify factors that moderate or inhibit their perception of flexibility bias, as distinct from stigma per se, and discuss the limitations of our research as well as its implications for future research and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from representative population surveys in 17 countries, we find that the lower rate of female business ownership is primarily due to women's lower propensity to start businesses rather than to differences in survival rates across genders. We show that women are less confident in their entrepreneurial skills, have different social networks and exhibit higher fear of failure than men. After controlling for endogeneity, we find that these variables explain a substantial part of the gender gap in entrepreneurial activity. Although, of course, their relative importance varies significantly across countries, these factors appear to have a universal effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this study is to investigate gender differences in leadership styles and in organizational outcome variables, together with the influence of organizational/contextual variables on leadership styles in female and male participants in Spain. The sample comprised 226 participants (35 leaders and 191 subordinates) belonging to 35 work teams. The general findings show that only 2 of the 10 tested leadership styles are different for female and male leaders. Specifically, subordinates rate female leaders as more autocratic and negotiating than men, and this evaluation varies according to the subordinates' sex. We also found that some differences in the rating of female and male leaders depend on whether the organization is stereotypically feminine or masculine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a sample of 467 asset managers from four countries we robustly find that women manage smaller funds than men, despite tough competition in this industry. Interestingly, the gender gap exists only for managers of smaller funds, i.e. at the lower end of the hierarchy, as quantile regressions show. This is inconsistent with the glass ceiling hypothesis. Going further, this gender gap is limited to large firms. Explanations may refer to large firms using market power in the area of smaller funds or to 'visibility' among top asset managers protecting against unequal treatment of the sexes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]