Cross-Cultural Analysis of Gender Gap in Entrepreneurship

Abstract

Women entrepreneurs have progressively gained more space in what is mostly a man-dominated business world. However, a considerable gender gap in the likelihood of starting a business venture still exists in most countries in the world. Such gap can vary depending on the country and on its socio-cultural, legal and economic conditions among others. In this paper, Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and the Human Development Index of 55 countries are tested in order to identify what factors have a positive effect on the gender gap. Results indicate that the most influential factor is the Human Development index, meaning that the more developed a country is, the lower the gender gap in the entrepreneurship is. In addition, the results also indicate that a lower level of gender gap is also observed in rather individualistic, pragmatic and risk-adverse cultures.

Author Biographies

Giorgia Salis, La Salle University, Mexico City, Mexico

Giorgia Salis is a freshly graduated student of International Management from La Salle University (Mexico). Her Master's studies were concerned with international business management from various points of view, such as Business Ethics, Human Resources, Business Strategy, Business Law, Negotiation, Marketing and so forth. In addition, she has a Bachelor's Degree in Foreign Languages and Cultures from the University of Siena (Italy), where she studied English, French, German, Spanish and Russian. She has spent the last six years moving from Italy to foreign countries for study purposes. Such countries are Germany, the United States, France and Mexico, where she had the possibility to deepen her linguistic and intercultural expertise, which finally sparked her interest in doing research on cultural matters, thereby linking the latter to business-related topics.

Martin Flegl, La Salle University, Mexico City, Mexico

Martin Flegl is a full-time researcher at La Salle University in Mexico City, Mexico. His research interests include Decision-making and Multi-criteria Decision Analysis related to efficiency and performance analysis in several areas, mainly in education, sport, economy, among others. Martin has been a lecturer of Decision-making theory and Operations research courses at Business School, La Salle University in Mexico City since 2015. Moreover, he is responsible for research development at Actuarial studies at Business School. Martin is an Editor of the International conference ERIE, and an Executive editor of ERIES Journal, as well as a member of scientific committees of several international conferences and journals.

References

Published
2021-04-19
How to Cite
Salis, G., & Flegl, M. (2021). Cross-Cultural Analysis of Gender Gap in Entrepreneurship. Changing Societies & Personalities, 5(1), 83–102. doi:10.15826/csp.2021.5.1.123
Section
Articles