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This paper aims to illustrate the main contributions of the context-gender discussion in entrepreneurship research and its main developments over time to identify promising future research avenues.

This paper builds on the author’s extensive knowledge of the context-gender debate and on several recent overviews and reviews of the debate. It is written as essay, introducing its main themes through a personal reflection and complemented by a selective review of research on gendered contexts and women’s entrepreneurship.

The context-gender discussion has moved forward. The first wave of context-gender studies contextualized gender, considering the impact of contexts on women’s entrepreneurship. Nowadays, studies are conducted on how contexts are gendered and how they are constructed in gendered ways through, for example, words, images, cognitions, as well as how women entrepreneurs can impact on and enact their contexts.

This paper contributes novel insights into contextualizing gender and gendering contexts. It is unique in suggesting that a perspective on gendering contexts will allow to explore the diversity of entrepreneurship and further develop theories related to contexts and gender.

The purpose of this paper is to make the argument that previously marginalized but now flourishing subfields of entrepreneurship research continue to provide insights that can form the basis for future entrepreneurship research that is more broadly practical and critical. What is currently core or “mainstream” in entrepreneurship research would then be seen as an important but rare special case.

The essay briefly explores a number of illustrative themes that have emerged and become important in women’s entrepreneurship research (acknowledging that some similar themes have emerged in other subfields). These themes are used to suggest how broader application of such insights to theory-building about entrepreneurship in general – rather than “just” to “women’s entrepreneurship” – might greatly enrich the field.

The authors’ arguments suggest that research focused on ghettoized subfields such as women’s entrepreneurship challenge the assumptions of what entrepreneurship is and what it contributes. For example the richer perspective on motivations, goals, and outcomes and on the possibilities of emancipation that currently animate research on women’s entrepreneurship can improve the understanding of all entrepreneurship.

Too much of current entrepreneurship research is both of limited practical value for “practitioners” and of little “critical value” for scholars interested in how things might work better. The authors argue that by broadening the set of goals, motivations, contexts and accomplishments that are taken as legitimate targets of study, entrepreneurship research can become both more practical and more critical and thus more broadly useful and legitimate.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief history of the evolution of the Diana Project and the Diana International Research Conference. The authors examine the impact of the publications, conferences and research contributions and consider key factors in the success of this collaborative research organization. They discuss the ongoing legacy, suggesting ways to extend this into the future.

This paper uses an historical narrative and a citation analysis.

The Diana Project was founded by five women professors in 1999 with the purpose of investigating women’s access to growth capital. Following a series of academic articles, and numerous presentations, the first Diana International Conference was held in Stockholm, Sweden. At this convening, 20 scholars from 13 countries shared their knowledge of women’s entrepreneurship, venture creation and growth, culminating in the first volume of the Diana Book Series. Since then, 14 international conferences have been held, resulting in 10 special issues of top academic journals and 11 books. More than 600 scholars have attended or participated in Diana conferences or publications.

Contributions from the Diana International Conferences’ special issues of journals and books have advanced theory across topics, levels, geographies and methods. Articles emerging from Diana scholars are some of the top contributions about women’s entrepreneurship and gender to the field of entrepreneurship. Future research directions are included.

This analysis demonstrates the success of a unique woman-focused collaborative research initiative and identifies key success factors, suggesting how these might be expanded in the future.

To date, more than 600 scholars have participated in the Diana International Conferences or publications. Diana is the only community dedicated to rigorous and relevant research about gender and women’s entrepreneurship. Going forward, efforts to expand work on education for women’s entrepreneurship, women entrepreneurship faculty and careers, and women entrepreneurs, gender and policy will take place to extend this legacy.

The paper is unique in that it is the first to show the substantial legacy and impact of the Diana project since its inception in 1999. Further, it demonstrates how a feminist approach to entrepreneurial principles can yield insights about this unique research initiative and collaborative organization.

Government attention to women’s entrepreneurship has increased in the past two decades; however, there are few cross-cultural studies to inform policy development. This paper aims to draw on gender and institutional theory to report on the status of female-focused small and medium-sized enterprises/entrepreneurship policies and to ask how – and to what extent – do women’s entrepreneurship policies differ among countries?

A common methodological approach is used to identify gaps in the policy-practice nexus.

The study highlights countries where policy is weak but practice is strong, and vice versa.

The study’s data were restricted to policy documents and observations of practices and initiatives on the ground.

The findings have implications for policy makers in respect of support for women’s entrepreneurship. Recommendations for future research are advanced.

The paper contributes to extant knowledge and understanding about entrepreneurship policy, specifically in relation to women’s entrepreneurship. It is also one of the few studies to use a common methodological approach to explore and compare women’s entrepreneurship policies in 13 countries.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a new gender‐aware framework to provide a springboard for furthering a holistic understanding of women's entrepreneurship.

The paper builds on an existing framework articulating the “3Ms” (markets, money and management) required for entrepreneurs to launch and grow ventures. Drawing on institutional theory, it is argued that this “3M” framework needs further development and “motherhood” and “meso/macro environment” are added to extend and mediate the “3Ms” and construct a “5M” framework to enable the study of women's entrepreneurship in its own right.

It was found that “Motherhood” is a metaphor representing the household and family context of female entrepreneurs, which might have a larger impact on women than men. The meso/macro environment captures considerations beyond the market, such as expectations of society and cultural norms (macro), and intermediate structures and institutions (meso).

For the women entrepreneur, this analysis has implications for understanding the sources of the challenges they face by providing insights on the importance of the interplay of both individual and societal factors that impact on their enterprise. For policy makers, it turns the spotlight on the need for an integrated approach for fostering female entrepreneurs that is not blind to overarching institutionalised social structures and gender asymmetries.

The framework helps lay a foundation for coherent research on women's entrepreneurship. It is unique in making explicit the social embeddedness of women entrepreneurs and considers the multiple levels of influence on their entrepreneurial actions.

The purpose of the paper is to offer an insight into gender, context and entrepreneurial learning of women entrepreneurs in Germany.

The paper explores entrepreneurial learning of women entrepreneurs both conceptually and empirically. Section 1 introduces a conceptual framework, which allows analysing entrepreneurial learning both from an individual gender‐specific and from a context‐based perspective. Empirically, the paper explores how women entrepreneurs acquire the (business‐related) knowledge to start and grow an enterprise and the impact of regional, sector, family and social as well as macro environments in this regard. Findings are based on 31 in‐depths interviews with women entrepreneurs and 23 interviews with key experts.

It is found that the meso environment is more of an indirect influence; the macro and micro environments are strong influences on lives and decisions of women entrepreneurs, especially on their opportunity recognition. The business environment has both a direct and indirect influence.

The results demonstrate an ongoing need for a contemporary image of women's entrepreneurship in Germany. The major challenge for policy‐makers and support organizations therefore lies in propagating diverse entrepreneurial images and in incorporating the diversity of women's entrepreneurship and their specific learning approaches into policies and support offers.

The paper contributes a different and so far neglected perspective on entrepreneurial learning and opportunity recognition, drawing attention to the contextual influences and the embedding of cognitive processes.

There is growing political interest in new forms of precarious self‐employment located in a “grey area” between employment and self‐employment. A wide range of concepts has been used to debate this issue, and this paper aims to clarify these debates through the concept of involuntary self‐employment.

The paper reviews the empirical, conceptual and legal‐policy approaches to involuntary self‐employment via three country case studies in Finland, Germany and the UK. A range of relevant domestic academic literature, articles in the media, selected key expert interviews, and policy and legal documents are employed.

Conceptual clarity regarding involuntary self‐employment is achieved through a discussion of two aspects of the phenomenon: the characteristics of involuntariness from a motives‐based perspective, and the legal/economic perspectives and policy issues. The motives‐based analysis argues that involuntariness as such does not seem to have severe implications on the individuals' well being, given that the individual earns a satisfactory livelihood from her or his business activities. The discussion of the characteristics of and regulation related to working arrangements in the “grey area” between employment and self‐employment, where the self‐employed individual is strongly dependent on the principal, shows that it is very difficult to regulate quasi self‐employment without harming “voluntary” forms of enterprise and inter‐firm cooperation at the same time.

The key contribution of the paper is to facilitate a foundation for subsequent empirical research and policy development.

The German government only recently started paying attention to the topic of female entrepreneurship as an important means to raise the overall level of entrepreneurship. Most relevant support policies concentrate on extending and stabilising the financial base of new female‐owned ventures. Relevant consultancy appears to play a less important role, although there has been a shift towards integrated packages in recent years. However, access to mainstream support is implicitly gender biased. Moreover, an integrated strategy for fostering female entrepreneurship also needs to consider that there are shortcomings in the institutional (political and societal) environment, possibly restricting women's interest in entrepreneurship and thus determining the extent of female entrepreneurship.