Gender Behavioral Issues and Entrepreneurship

Abstract

Women, despite the fact that they make up around 50% of the world’s population, own and manage significantly fewer businesses than men worldwide. Previous empirical research indicates that the gender gap in entrepreneurial propensity mainly comes from subjective perceptions as self-confidence in one’s own skills and fear of failure, and from women’s lower exposure to other entrepreneurs. In this chapter we present laboratory economic experiments that study, under controlled conditions, subjective perceptions of women and men that seem to affect entrepreneurial propensity. The results of the reviewed experiments indicate that correcting factors such as self-confidence is possible (due to its cultural origin) and would reduce differences in entrepreneurial propensity between genders. Specifically, the promotion among women of competitive sports, the emphasis on feminine references in entrepreneurship, and avoiding presenting entrepreneurial information with male stereotyping while reinforcing women stereotyping are recommended ways to help women gain self-confidence in competitive environments, as entrepreneurship. Regarding the other subjective perception that has been found to sustain the gender gap in entrepreneurship propensity, the fear of losses (and/or attitudes towards risk), the reviewed experimental research, still in need of more context-free experiments, similarly suggests cultural changes and education as ways to overcome this gender-gap.