Diversifying Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Education for Increased Accessibility to the Wise

Abstract

There is little evidence that the gender gap in entrepreneurial self-efficacy is being narrowed by entrepreneurship and enterprise education (EEE) in Europe. Which raises a very serious question about European EEE: is it failing women? If we look more specifically at science and engineering research, its impact and the status of women in the disciple and EEE, we see that Women from Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines are lost in larger proportions than men at every step of the postgraduate ladder and are under-represented in top positions across the spectrum of business, public service and academia (Royal Society of Edinburgh, 2012). Under these conditions, one might expect that these women are turning to entrepreneurship and yet the proportion of women-owned enterprises in high-tech industries remains very low and in the European Union is currently under15% (ECDGEI). This relatively small representation of women has implications for the realisation of the impact of scientific research funding through commercialisation and entrepreneurship, as an indicator of sexual inequality (Devos, Mclean and O’Hara, 2003) and as a loss to the economy (Gatewood et al., 2004; Wilson, Kickul and Marlino, 2007; Nixdorff and Rosen, 2010).