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To date, little research has been focused on the nature and dynamics of female entrepreneurial networking activity. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to examine how gender and culture affect business creation, how women perceive social capital, and how important their personal networks are for their businesses, especially in the context of patriarchal societies.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with women entrepreneurs living and operating businesses in Turkey and in four countries of the Middle East and North African region, namely, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Egypt.

The results indicate that being a woman entrepreneur in a highly patriarchal society limits entrepreneurial activities due to culture and social norms. However, networking appears as the key factor for these women entrepreneurs to overcome the barriers that they face, such as access to capital, financial information, resources, and new business opportunities.

This study has limitations that tend to be commonly found in exploratory studies, so you cannot make generalizations. However, the findings lay the groundwork for future studies to examine the role of networking activity in female entrepreneurship in the context of patriarchal societies.

The findings are helpful for policymakers and other social groups interested in improving the conditions for female entrepreneurship. Governments and other economic actors need to provide training in both management and networking skills, encourage local businesses and associations to provide their venues for networking opportunities, and also provide support to women business organizations.

Women’s entrepreneurship is growing, but still there is a scarcity of scholarly literature on the women entrepreneurs and their entrepreneurial activity.

This research provides empirical evidence of the nature and dynamics of female entrepreneurial networking activity in the context of patriarchal societies.

The purpose of this paper is to address the paradox that represents a shortage of women in management and senior leadership positions around the world, while research has consistently shown that having women in positions of influence leads to noteworthy organizational benefits, as guest editors for this special issue, the authors provide an overview of four key streams of cross-cultural research on gender – women in international management, anthropology and gender, women’s leadership, and women’s entrepreneurship – which have been fairly well-developed but remain underexplored.

Each author led the review of the scholarly literature stream that aligned most with personal research areas of expertise, while particularly focusing each literature review on the status of each body of work in relation to the topic of women and gender in international business and management.

The authors encourage future work on the role of women and gender (including gay, lesbian, and transgender) in cross-cultural management, and the influence of cross-cultural matters on gender. In addition to new research on obstacles and biases faced by women in management, the authors hope to see more scholarship on the benefits that women bring to their organizations.

New research could aim to provide specific evidence-based recommendations for: how organizations and individuals can work to develop more gender diversity in management and senior positions around the world, and encourage more women to start and grow bigger businesses.

Scholars can lead progress on important gender issues and contribute to quality information that guides politicians, organizational leaders, new entrants to the workforce.

This is the first paper to cover these topics and review the body of work on cross-cultural research on women in international business and management. The authors hope it serves as a useful launch pad for scholars conducting new research in this domain.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that culture and context (policy and environment) are key factors affecting gender inequalities within and across countries.

This paper applies conceptual and descriptive statistics.

The authors found evidence of increasing gender equality in the workplace, but only for rich countries. Gender inequalities persist in the poorest countries, and the gap between rich and poor countries appears to be widening not narrowing.

This paper demonstrates the need for a comprehensive research program on gender and international business.

The authors provided useful statistics that could possibly be picked up by newspapers. The paper also highlights the need for a more sustained research program on gender and development.

This paper demonstrates that the public perception of increasing gender equality applies only in very high development (rich) countries. In fact, gender inequality rises as economic development levels decline across countries, and the gap between very high and low countries has widened over the past 15 years.

The empirical findings with respect to gender inequality across United Nations Development Program country categories over time are, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, novel and original. Relating the gender inequality gap to culture and context highlights the roles that social issues and the environment play in affecting gender inequality across countries and across time.