Female and male entrepreneurship: how women and men face institutions

Abstract

Recent researches consider female entrepreneurs important for economic development. Women like men contribute to employment creation and economic growth but they also make a contribution to the diversity of entrepreneurship in the economic process. Some studies show that the participation of women in entrepreneurship is affected by the same factors that affect men but evidence underline that the rate of female entrepreneurs is lower than male entrepreneurs (M. Minniti, P. Arenius, 2003)1. The main purpose of this work is to examine whether and how countries’ institutional factors differently influence male versus female entrepreneurship. This study investigates previous marks about women and men entrepreneurs in order to provide additional results which can be responsible for a better understanding of this phenomenon. This analysis considers countries’ differences in culture, demographic environment, literacy, education, socio-economic level, labor force, organizational forms, and employment by sectors, and economic growth. The three essays presented in this work investigate three different aspects of the same topic and are related to the same literature review. Moreover, the sources of the data used for these three papers are always the same. We use GEM data and World Bank data to develop analyses that contribute to a literature that has omitted countries institutions’ influences on both males and females aspiring entrepreneurs. The decision to focus on this specific theoretical framework is related to the need of well investigate the difference between women and men in entrepreneurship across countries in order to provide adequate incentives to female entrepreneurship. We provide a summary of the three essays in the section below.