Effects of Culture on Women Entrepreneurs’ Success: A Cross-Country Study

Abstract

Most entrepreneurs define success as business growth. However, for women entrepreneurs, success incorporates various aspects and meanings. Thus, success is by far one of the most complex concepts in the field of entrepreneurship. Because women entrepreneurs’ success is a multifaceted concept, it has, therefore, multiple interpretations. Moreover, researchers across the world provided various definitions correlated to qualitative or quantitative approaches to this phenomenon. In the meantime, cross-country studies revealed multiple factors affecting women entrepreneurs’ success. A crucial factor affecting the success of women entrepreneurs across the world is the culture. Thus, studies conducted across the globe revealed various types and dimensions of culture and indicated different effects of culture on women entrepreneurs’ success. The authors discovered the significance of gender for interpretation of success and culture. The purpose of the study is to examine various effects of culture on women entrepreneurs’ success in a cross-country context and to design an integrative, holistic theoretical framework that enhances our understanding of success for women entrepreneurs from a gender perspective and explains the effects of culture. The value of designing such theoretical framework is the increase in knowledge with regard to cultural impact on women entrepreneurs’ success and the request for viable solutions to be designed by policy makers, which can help women entrepreneurship to grow.