Gender dynamics in serial reward-based crowdfunding: female persistence and stereotype effects

Funding new business ventures: Are decision makers biased against women entrepreneurs?

It is observed that there are more male entrepreneurs engaged in entrepreneurial activities than female entrepreneurs given a number of factors that hinder the female entrepreneurs. However, does this translate to the male entrepreneurs being more innovative than the female entrepreneurs? This study aims to examine the innovative behaviour of male and female entrepreneurs in Akwa Ibom State. Using a survey design and a purposive sampling method, 250 respondents were examined for the study and the data analysed using descriptive statistics revealed the findings that both male and female entrepreneurs have similar levels of innovative behaviour, although the female entrepreneurs exhibited a slightly higher level of innovative behaviour in the areas of product innovation, process innovation, market innovation and raw materials innovation. The result indicated that the male entrepreneurs’ process innovation led to a slightly speedier delivery of their goods compared to the female entrepreneurs and that their goods stand out against competitors compared to the female entrepreneurs. In organisational restructuring, both male and female entrepreneurs have a similar level of innovative behaviour, however, the female entrepreneurs tend to reorder each division of their businesses to ensure employee’s effectiveness more than the male entrepreneurs and profit tend to increase more for the female entrepreneurs who reorder their businesses compared to the male entrepreneurs. Hence, more female citizens in the state need to be encouraged to startup and to stay creative and innovative.

Gender education and entrepreneurship have become worldwide phenomena for women, particularly in patriarchy societies where all kinds of discriminations, subjugation against them are frightening realities of contemporary times. As a result, female entrepreneurship has been weighed down by poor education, social norms, and lack of access to free credit facilities. It is in this context that this paper examines the impacts of gender education on female entrepreneurship in Enugu urban, Enugu state, Nigeria. A survey design was employed and 300 respondents were selected using the simple random sampling technique. Out of this number of respondents, only 280 (90.33%) structured questionnaire were returned and analyzed using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The distribution of the respondents showed 210 (75%) were female entrepreneurs, while 70 respondents (25%) were male entrepreneurs. Among the findings, an overwhelming majority of the respondents are of the view that the female entrepreneurs are important for the socio-economic transformation of the Enugu State, and by extension, Nigeria. Secondly, the study agrees that there is hardly a society where gender stereotypes do not exist but that these aspects of the gender belief system which are anti- female entrepreneurs' development have been over taken by the power of gender education. In addition, the study shows that gender education is the most viable and veritable vehicle for guaranteeing and sustaining female entrepreneurs to continue to expand entrepreneurship in Nigeria. Thirdly, this study has presented a different picture of women making some tremendous efforts in spite of all odds cannot be underestimated because their contributions have been remarkable despite the challenges they face in their quest to transform the patriarchal Igbo society, especially Enugu State. Based on this, the study concludes that the contributions of female entrepreneurs in Nigeria's entrepreneurship development cannot be underestimated because their contributions have been remarkable despite the challenges they face. In this vein, the study suggests that gender education should be a priority to halt all forms of discriminatory practices against female entrepreneurs and in the same vein, calls for elimination of prejudices and customary practices that are based on the idea of the inferiority or superiority of either sex or on stereotyped roles for men and women. Above all, government should, through financial institutions, grant free interest loans to encourage female entrepreneurs plunge themselves into businesses to sustain the breaking of the glass ceilings.

Institutional investors have played an important role on the financial area, and the academic researchers have paid close attention to this investment group. A series of influencing factors of institutional investors' investment decision-making have become the research objects. From the perspective of entrepreneurs’ gender, this paper studies the impact of entrepreneurs’ gender on the institutional investors’ investment decisions. This paper selects data from listed companies on the GEM board to conduct empirical analysis, and analyzes the relationship between the institutional investors’ investment and the gender of entrepreneurs. To study what investment decisions will be made and whether the gender of entrepreneurs will be taken into account by institutional investment. The empirical results of this paper show that the gender of entrepreneurs will have an impact on the number of shares held by institutional investors, that is, compared with enterprises run by female entrepreneurs, enterprises dominated by male entrepreneurs have higher shareholdings of institutional investors. The results in this paper can enrich the researches on the institutional investors' investment decisions and the gender of entrepreneurs.

The paper attempts to investigate the gender differences in ICT usage, professed system attributes, and entrepreneurial traits among entrepreneurs of Bangladesh. The study was done on 200 entrepreneurs through structured questionnaire. We adopted the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) in this study to examine the differences in professed usefulness, professed user friendliness, and ICT usage between male and female entrepreneurs in Bangladesh. Results show that male entrepreneurs are more flexible and persevering as compared to female entrepreneurs. Mean perceptions of system's usefulness and user friendliness are significantly higher for female entrepreneurs than for males. Risk-taking propensity is an important technology usage determinant among female entrepreneurs but not among males. Innovativeness is associated with usage by both entrepreneurs. There is a strong impact of professed usefulness on system usage by male and female entrepreneurs. There is no significant association between professed user friendliness and usage. Overall ICT usage, usage of basic and advanced systems, and systems usage for administrative, planning, and control purposes do not differ based on gender. Such findings led to some implications on the basis of which lastly several recommendations are made.

We explore similarities and differences between male and female entrepreneurs, their businesses and strategies in different transition environments. Our analysis illustrates that in a transition context there are more similarities than differences for female and male entrepreneurs and their businesses, essentially because the difficult nature of the external environment facing entrepreneurs is a dominant influence. Gender makes a difference regarding business aims, business performance and success. Overall, the results emphasise the need to look at entrepreneurship within its social and economic context, which also might explain differences often taken as gender-related ones. With regard to policy implications, results indicate that improving the overall business environment will help women as well as men.

Factors mediating gender and firm performance in Lao micro, small, and medium sized enterprises

The objective of this study has been to compare motivation, intention, fear of failure and self-efficacy in starting business ventures in Saudi Arabia. Inductive content analysis is used to identify the similarities and differences between two cites and groups of people in Saudi Arabia; both male and female entrepreneurs and those who have already established a business. Furthermore, the paper draws on data gathered from eight interviews in the cities of Riyadh and Jeddah. Four of these interviews were conducted with male entrepreneurs and the remaining four were with female entrepreneurs. A description and analysis of each entrepreneur was developed individually including short observations on the interviewees; noting movements and body language. We found the motivation for being one’s own boss is greater in Riyadh than in Jeddah (p=0.024) whereas self-efficacy is greater in Jeddah yet this difference is not significant. Regarding intention, no significant difference was found between region and gender. Finally, both regions consider fear of failure to be predictable. The study presents important contributions to theorists and practitioners in entrepreneurial activities in Saudi Arabia. Our research has contributed to the study in entrepreneurial motivation, intention, role of management, and role of culture of male and female entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia hence providing more knowledge and information towards the behavior of Saudi entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurship is considered a viable venture by the youth for the betterment of their livelihoods. While the choices, special needs and the entrepreneurial potentials of the youth need to be well understood by policy makers, little research has been done to understand these dimensions. This study explores how gender interacts with other determinants to influence the decision of choosing a place of trade among young entrepreneurs in Ghana, using multinomial logistic regression model and techniques. The results show that, while controlling for gender roles, young female entrepreneurs relative to their male counterparts have increasing probability of trading from home than trading from an organised market; while young entrepreneurs from high income households with higher levels of education are more likely to trade from an organised market. These findings drum home the need for requisite policies to foster the growth of entrepreneurship among both young male and female entrepreneurs in Ghana.

This study addresses the underrepresentation of women and the so-far neglected process perspective in empirical entrepreneurial research. It aims to identify the personality traits that differentiate successful female entrepreneurs from their less successful peers and to determine which traits are crucial for pre-launch, launch, and post-launch success. Independent t-tests on 305 female entrepreneurs (and 476 male entrepreneurs) from the DACH region highlight the role of self-efficacy, proactivity, locus of control, and need for achievement for female entrepreneurs. Multiple regression analyses further reveal the importance of self-efficacy for every phase of women’s entrepreneurial journey. While the need for autonomy was critical during pre-launch and launch, locus of control significantly predicted female entrepreneurial success in the pre-launch and post-launch phases. Contrary to previous research, risk-taking was not a crucial trait for female entrepreneurs when compared to their male counterparts, while both showed similar levels of need for autonomy, proactivity, need for achievement, perseverance, self-control, and locus of control. The study offers valuable insights into successful entrepreneurship and highlights the need for female- and phase-specific support programs to enhance self-efficacy among female entrepreneurs.

Drawing on role congruity theory, we examine whether and when women-led ventures are more likely to fail than men-led ventures. We investigate the relationship between the gender of the leading entrepreneur and business failure and three important moderators of this relationship: whether the leadership assignment is consistent with merit, whether the venture operates in a female-dominated industry, and whether the venture is operated by a spousal team. Drawing on a unique, nationally representative data set of entrepreneurial firms sampled from the U.S. population in 2005 and followed yearly until 2011, we demonstrate that female entrepreneurs’ businesses are more likely to fail than those of their male counterparts. Regarding the moderating effects, our results show that female entrepreneurs’ businesses are more likely to fail when their merit-based competence is inferior to that of their cofounders. However, in the same scenario, male entrepreneurs are still able to lead their businesses successfully. We also find that women entrepreneurs’ disadvantages in leading new businesses are amplified in contexts that many have expected to be supportive of women, including in industries dominated by women and within spousal teams. Together, our results suggest that women’s disadvantages in leading their businesses may be perpetuated by gender beliefs that discount women’s leadership. Based on our findings, we discuss our contributions to theory and practice, and we offer implications for future research.

PurposeIn recent years, the topic of women's entrepreneurship has gained increasing attention from researchers and policymakers. Its role in economic growth and development has been widely recognized in several studies. However, the relationship between gender in entrepreneurship and innovation is an underexplored aspect in particular at a country-level perspective. This paper aims to answer the following question: Does female entrepreneurship impact innovation at a national level?Design/methodology/approachUsing a panel dataset of 35 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries over the period 2002–2019, the authors carried out a comprehensive econometric analysis, based on the fixed-effect model, the random-effect model and the feasible generalized least squares estimator, as well as a battery of tests to prevent problems of multicollinearity, heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation of the error terms. In doing so, the authors found consistent and robust results on the linear and nonlinear relationship between women's entrepreneurship and innovation, using selected country indicators from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) consortium, the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) and the World Development Indicators (WDI), including female self-employment, female nascent entrepreneurship and R&D investment and controlling for the same relationships in the case of men's entrepreneurship.FindingsThis study shows that the level of R&D investment, which according to the literature can be considered as a proxy of innovation, is higher when the level of women's entrepreneurship is low. However, exploring more in depth this relationship and the relationship between male entrepreneurship and innovation, the authors found two important and new results. The first one involves the different impact on R&D investment of female self-employment and female nascent entrepreneurship. In particular, female self-employment appears to have a linear negative impact on the R&D, while the impact of female nascent entrepreneurship is statistically nonsignificant. The second one affects the nonlinearity of the negative effect, suggesting that very different challenges are possible at different levels of women's entrepreneurship. In addition, analyzing the role of human capital in the relationship between R&D investment and women entrepreneurship, it emerges that higher education (as the main component of human capital) makes early-stage women's entrepreneurship more technologically consuming, which promotes R&D investment. A higher level of education lessens the significance of the negative relationship between the simplest type of women entrepreneurship (female self-employment) and R&D investment.Originality/valueThe originality of the study is that it provides new evidence regarding the link between women's entrepreneurship and innovation at the macro level, with a specific focus on self-employed women entrepreneurs and early-stage women entrepreneurship. In this sense, to the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is among the few showing a nonlinear relationship between women's entrepreneurship and country-level innovation and a negative impact only in the case of female self-employment. Moreover, this study has relevant implications from a policymaking perspective, in terms of promoting more productive women's entrepreneurship.

PurposeAlthough heuristics and biases seal the fate of entrepreneurial enterprises by directly influencing entrepreneurs’ decisions, previous studies have ignored the role of gender in this regard by considering female and male entrepreneurs homogeneous in their susceptibility to heuristics and biases. Thus, this paper aims to advance the existing body of knowledge on heuristics and biases in the field of entrepreneurship by exploring two heuristics of affect and representativeness as well as three biases of overconfidence, escalation of commitment and illusion of control in female and male entrepreneurs’ entry and opportunity-related decisions.Design/methodology/approachThe data were gathered through semi-structured and in-depth interviews with ten male and nine female Iranian techno-entrepreneurs active in advanced medicine and biotechnology. The gathered data were analyzed by thematic and narrative data analysis.FindingsAccording to the results, while both male and female entrepreneurs show certain heuristics and biases, there are some noteworthy distinctions. More precisely, contrary to their male counterparts, the female entrepreneurs neither rely on the representativeness heuristic nor show any signs of the escalation of commitment in their decisions.Practical implicationsThere are some valuable implications emanated from this study which could be of use for not only future researchers but also entrepreneurs, especially the ones founding and running small businesses themselves.Originality/valueWhile there is a strong body of literature on heuristics and biases in the field of entrepreneurship, previous studies have considered female and male entrepreneurs homogeneous in their proneness to heuristics and biases. Thus, the current study enriches the body of knowledge by being the first comparative study of heuristics and biases in female and male entrepreneurs’ decisions.

Entrepreneurs start and grow their ventures in a widely varying set of institutional contexts. One differentiator is a country’s regulatory efficiency which encompasses the freedom to start and to run a business without excessive government interventions around registering, hiring, and firing employees, and price controls on currency. The efficiency of regulations varies substantially among countries and imposes additional costs and risks on entrepreneurs’ activities. We integrate insights from institutional theory and recent literature on gender and entrepreneurship to better understand how a country’s regulatory efficiency affects male and female entrepreneurs’ employment growth ambitions. We explore three aspects of regulatory efficiency: business freedom (e.g., to start, operate, and close a venture), labor freedom (e.g., laws around minimum wage, layoffs, severance), and monetary freedom (e.g., price stability) using data from over 47,000 entrepreneurs in 68 countries. We find that entrepreneurs’ growth ambitions are higher in countries with more efficient regulations, particularly those countries characterized by fewer labor law restrictions and greater monetary freedoms. These findings are further exacerbated by gender by such that, relative to their female counterparts, male entrepreneurs have significantly greater venture growth ambitions. Our paper contributes to the discussion on how formal institutions influence women and men entrepreneurs in distinct ways.

This article presents results of a study that investigates egocentric network differences between female and male entrepreneurs and their entrepreneurial outcomes in Tanzania. Based on a random sample of 272 micro-, small, and medium-size enterprises, the study reveals that female and male entrepreneurs have diverse networks. However, when compared to their male counterparts, female entrepreneurs' strong ties included more kin members. No significant gender difference in the composition of weaker ties was observed, suggesting gender differences in the choice of individuals with whom to have strong ties but not with whom to have weak ties. A significant gender difference in entrepreneurial outcomes at both start up and at the time of research was found, suggesting an antecedent networking behavior influence on performance.