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The ability to develop and maintain an effective network is an entrepreneurial competency. There are differences in female social networks' features as well as in the way of expanding it comparing to men's. But, there is little attention to female entrepreneurs' networks. This chapter focuses on the dynamics of female entrepreneurs' networks at different stages of the business life cycle. A qualitative study was conducted on a sample of Iranian female entrepreneurs in the trade sector situated in Tehran. The results of data analysis of 10 semi-structured interviews show a considerable change in networking activity over time. Although the most important role of networking for women entrepreneurs in both early-stage and established businesses is to achieve opportunities, information, and resources. Also, the combination of female entrepreneurs' networks is most male-dominated. And the main challenge of networking in the early-stage is being female, while it becomes rather an advantage for established ones. Finally, Iranian female entrepreneurs become more aware of networking benefits over time.

The current changes and relevance of female entrepreneurship at the national and international level for economic growth, social impact and environmental degradation highlight the need for more analysis of female entrepreneurial typologies and value creations.

This chapter aims to contribute to the field of female entrepreneurship literature. It provides theoretical evidence about the main internal (personal characteristic and motivation, network) and external (women migration, crises, digitalization) drivers that trigger women entrepreneurs to undertake entrepreneurial actions in national and international contexts. Besides, this chapter conceptualizes a new untapped context of multiple value-creating entrepreneurial systems in the female entrepreneurship literature by uncovering a blended form of value creation encompassing several social, economic and environmental levels.

Globally, the number of women entrepreneurs lags behind the number of men. Understanding how women entrepreneurs can be developed and fostered remains an open avenue of inquiry. One particular area of consideration is the role of other women in supporting and sustaining women’s entrepreneurship. Using social identity theory for our framing, we utilize in-person interviews with various women entrepreneurs across a range of global settings (urban Hong Kong, Singapore, United Kingdom, and rural India) to focus on understanding the roles of other women as they relate to entrepreneurship. Across settings, we found that women entrepreneurs identified four key roles that other women played in developing their ventures. Furthermore, certain roles, such as having a female role model, were critical in rural settings over urban settings. We thus consider the implications of having other women for women’s entrepreneurship broadly.

The paper aims to shed light on the factors that affect female entrepreneurship at the macro-environment level and motherhood in the Kingdom of Bahrain.

Drawing on the 5M model and an institutional approach, this paper uses a qualitative semi-structured in-depth interview approach with 44 female entrepreneurs.

The results uncover several findings highlighting the important influence of the macro-environment on female entrepreneurs in Bahrain, grouped under formal (complex regulations, double employment constraints and financial obligations) and informal (societal perceptions) institutions, as well as the nuanced role of motherhood factors.

The study addresses the motherhood aspect of female entrepreneurs comprising household, family, child/elderly care and societally perceived female duties. Therefore, it constitutes the primary building block in a more gender-aware approach to female entrepreneurship. Addressing societal perceived gender roles leads to a comprehensive perspective on the study of female entrepreneurs.

This paper examines the predictive role of personality traits on the entrepreneurial bricolage behaviour of female entrepreneurs in a resource-constrained setting.

Data were collected using a structured survey questionnaire from female entrepreneurs owning and operating micro-small firms. The analysis and hypotheses testing were performed adopting SEM-PLS3.0 software.

The results showed that all dimensions of the Big Five personality traits significantly influence entrepreneurial bricolage. In addition, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and intellect were found to be the most important traits in female entrepreneurs for bricolage behaviour.

The results can help provide a better understanding of the linkages between entrepreneurial traits and bricolage. Development agencies may take up this result to ensure the appropriate social inclusion by supporting female entrepreneurs.

To the authors' best knowledge, this paper is the first empirical study that has investigated the relationship between personality traits and entrepreneurial bricolage.

Existing entrepreneurship literature has provided mixed evidence as to whether resource providers discriminate against female-led innovative start-up ventures in their resource commitment decisions either in terms of the likelihood or conditions of resource provision. While some studies revealed evidence indicative of negative discrimination against female entrepreneurs, others have provided evidence suggestive of positive discrimination. In light of these divergent findings, the purpose of this paper is to develop a more nuanced and integrative approach to studying gender biases in entrepreneurial resource provision with greater attention paid to both moderating contingency factors and mediating mechanisms.

The authors develop a conceptual model and empirically testable propositions describing whether, how and when entrepreneurial resource providers are likely to under-, over- and equivalue female-led innovative start-up ventures relative to equivalent male-led start-up ventures. The model applies not only to institutional or private investors as providers of financial capital to start-up ventures as discussed extensively in extant entrepreneurship literature but also to prospective employees as providers of human capital and prospective consumers as providers of money in exchange for an entrepreneurial product or service. The authors discuss the gender-typing of the entrepreneur's core product/service offering as a key contingency factor likely to moderate the proposed relation. The authors further delineate the importance of what they refer to as the “first”- and “second-order” mediating mechanisms underlying the hypothesized relation between resource provider evaluations of the male versus female founder-CEO, the attractiveness of his/her start-up venture and the (conditions of) resource provision to their start-ups.

Building on social-psychological theories of descriptive and prescriptive gender stereotypes and extant entrepreneurship literature, the authors establish that gender biases are likely to occur because of resource providers' perceptions of women entrepreneurs at the helm of male-typed start-up ventures to be less competent and agentic, as well as less warm and other-oriented than equivalent male entrepreneurs leading male-typed start-up ventures. The authors discuss the implications of such gender-biased evaluations for the application of stricter performance standards to female-led-male-typed start-up ventures and the likelihood and conditions of resource provision to their companies. The authors further discuss why and when female founder-CEOs of a female-typed (gender-neutral) start-up venture are likely to be overvalued (equivalued) compared to equivalent male founder-CEOs. The authors also develop propositions on additional contingency factors and mediators of the gendered evaluations of founder-CEOs and their start-up ventures, including resource providers' “second-order” gender beliefs, the high-cost versus low-cost resource commitment, individual differences in gender stereotyping and the perceived entrepreneurial commitment of the founder-CEO. The authors conclude by suggesting some practical implications for how to mitigate gender biases and discrimination by prospective resource providers.

Discussing the implications of descriptive and prescriptive gender stereotypes on evaluative decisions of entrepreneurial resources providers, this study advances not only the women's entrepreneurship literature but also the more-established scholarship on the role of gender stereotypes for women's advancement opportunities in the corporate world that has traditionally viewed entrepreneurship as the solution for women fleeing the gender-stereotype-based discrimination in the corporate setting to advance their careers.

The primary objective of this study is to attempt to answer the question, even with a limited sample of interviewees, if ethnic female entrepreneurs are behaving more as “female” or more as “ethnic” entrepreneurs.

This paper presents empirical data from a face‐to‐face interview type research conducted in the regions of Attica and Central Macedonia, Greece. The study involved conducting face‐to‐face interviews with 15 founders of ethnic minority businesses (EMBs), between May and June 2009.

The results suggest that ethnic female entrepreneurs may share some common characteristics with their ethnic male entrepreneurial colleagues but ethnic women's unique qualities, characteristics, motivations, background and business views distinguish them from their male ethnic counterparts bringing forth more their femininity rather than their ethnicity.

This paper presents the results of the first‐ever research on ethnic female entrepreneurs in Greece. It examines the influences and the factors that facilitate ethnic female entrepreneurs' decision to become self‐employed and their experiences of entrepreneurship. It discerns in which economic sectors they develop occupational niches and investigates how strong is family participation and support in their businesses. Last but not least this research brings forth the balance between domestic and business responsibilities and how much support from governmental initiatives, policies and training programs they receive.

Research investigating female entrepreneurs and their networking relationships has developed considerably over the past two decades. There are, however, few Sri Lankan studies that have specifically focussed on female entrepreneurs in terms of their social networks. This paper aims to examine the important influences on these female entrepreneurs’ networking behaviour within small businesses in the tourism sector.

Having established that the social constructionist approach is most suitable for this study, in-depth narrative interviews and observations were deemed a particularly suitable research tool. In total, 14 female entrepreneurs were purposively approached and interviewed. Narrative analysis was used to analyze and interpret qualitative data, which were organized with the assistance of QSR NVivo 10, a software programme.

Competing family responsibilities and business matters (being a good mum and dutiful wife), culture and societal expectations, running home-based business and building trust were found as main influences on female entrepreneurial networking behaviours. The majority revealed stressful times trying to combine the business with multiple roles and societal expectations.

Applications of the model in female entrepreneurial networking behaviour are suggested, within and beyond the context of the small business tourism industry in Sri Lanka.

This study enriches the understanding of social networks and social capital based on the experience of Sri Lankan female entrepreneurs, which is influenced by contextual factors of identity, gender and culture.

This paper aims to review female entrepreneurship in a (post) transition context, analysing its almost three-decade development in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Little research has focussed to date on female entrepreneurship in the Baltic countries. Using an institutional perspective, this paper aims to explain the unique interplay of formal and informal contexts that have shaped the development of female entrepreneurship in (post-) transition contexts.

This paper is based on an institutional reading and analysis of secondary data: statistical data, international reports and previous studies on female entrepreneurs.

There are more than 130,000 female entrepreneurs in the Baltic countries who share many common features and challenges. While the formal entrepreneurship environment is considered to be very developed in the Baltic countries, women are under-represented among the population of entrepreneurs, and there is gender-based sectoral segregation of female entrepreneurs in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. This indicates a need to recognise the diversity of patterns in entrepreneurial development, reflecting different inheritances from the Soviet past and the inertial character of some informal institutions, not to mention the differences in the pace of change during the transition period following the Soviet era.

This research can be used for academics, professionals, researchers and policymakers working in the fields of small business and entrepreneurship. Its data can furthermore be used to develop evidence-based policy and actions that would foster the participation of women in entrepreneurship in Baltic countries.

So far, little research has focussed on female entrepreneurship in the Baltic countries. The paper attempts to investigate that Baltic countries with their history of emphasis on gender equality on one hand and the award-winning business and entrepreneurship system on the other hand demonstrate relatively low levels of women’s entrepreneurship. This paper aims to contribute to the field of entrepreneurship, illustrating how entrepreneurship is linked to its social context.

This paper aims to provide insights on the void between the needs and demands of bank finance from female entrepreneurs and the supply, as well as the approaches of banks for that finance. In addition, it creates a conceptual framework recognising a tripartite and dynamic partnership amongst female entrepreneurs, banks and governments as essential to female entrepreneurship-development, based on Zambia as the context.

Concepts and theories are explained to construct a conceptual framework using the lens of multi-polar network theory and stakeholder engagement theory. In-depth discussions are facilitated through a bilateral partnership between each party and tripartite partnerships amongst female entrepreneurs, banks and governments.

The framework presents how female entrepreneurs, banks and governments are interconnected in the network as mutually benefiting stakeholders and shows their collective contribution to female entrepreneurship-development within certain contexts. The findings suggest that the sustainable development of female entrepreneurship depends on a dynamic tripartite partnership amongst female entrepreneurs, banks and governments.

The conceptual framework has important implications when setting up a nation’s enterprise development strategies and policies promoting inclusivity and diversity amongst a nation’s entrepreneurs. The contributions and the dynamic relationship of the three stakeholder groups should be acknowledged and considered to achieve sustainable development in female entrepreneur enterprises. The framework can be generalised to other emerging economies with similar social, economic and cultural profiles to Zambia, particularly in sub-Saharan African countries with patriarchal norms.

This paper extends multi-polar (network) theory and stakeholder management engagement theory, previously explained in homogeneous firms, to more complex and dynamic partnerships amongst heterogeneous organisations, i.e. female entrepreneurs, banks and governments.