New Horizons and Global Perspectives in Female Entrepreneurship Research

Although research on the relationship between culture and female entrepreneurship has developed strong insights, to date limited studies have examined the country-specific factors which may account for variance in women entrepreneurs' behaviour and subsequent outcomes. Therefore, this study attempts to close this gap through taking a closer look at the country-specific cultural factors creating differences in female entrepreneurs' behaviour and business strategies within the context of Turkey and the United Kingdom. In light of previous studies examining the impact of social institutions, this chapter adopts a survey approach to examine whether the networking strategies, growth orientation, perceived impediments, lifestyle choices and business structures of well-established female entrepreneurs vary between these two different cultural environments. In total, 240 females participated in this study with 120 from each country. The macro-cultural environments within the case countries are described through the application of Hofstede's Culture Model.

To date, limited studies have examined the country-specific social institutions to explain the informal entrepreneurial activities of women, particularly, within the context of the Middle East. This research paper attempts to close this gap through identifying the contextual and personal factors of domestic informal female entrepreneurs (DIFE) within the context of Turkey as a representative case of the Middle East region. The chapter takes national culture as the external context to identify the informal institutions that shape women's informal entrepreneurial activities and uses the Globe Project cultural dimensions to describe the sociocultural context. The qualitative research presented here was conducted with 38 DIFEs who participated in an EU-funded project in Turkey.

The profile of the informal domestic female entrepreneur reflects a middle-aged woman, married with children, literate with a low-level education and a necessity-type entrepreneur at the beginning who gradually evolves into a pull-type sociocultural entrepreneur in time. The findings show that, the perceived sociocultural environment can be categorized as a socially supportive culture – SSC (Hayton and Cacciotti, 2013, p. 713) which is one of the facilitators of informal entrepreneurial activities and creates a fertile and socially legitimized ground for the informal commercial activities of women in Turkey.

Women's contributions to socio-economic development of many developed and developing economies have improved substantially over the years. However, women participation in economic development and contributions to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) are still inadequate as a result of insufficient access to finance to enhance their business performance and other challenging factors such as infrastructure, government policy and enabling business environment. This study aimed to examine the financing issues faced with female entrepreneurs in Nigeria in terms of supply side finance gap that hinders their performance. Other specific objectives are to: establish reasons for external source of finance; identify various financial options available for female-owned businesses in Nigeria; investigate the effect of financial options on the performances of female-owned businesses in Nigeria. Survey research design was employed with administration of structured questionnaire on nine hundred and seventy five (975) female entrepreneurs of selected Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) from the population of nine million, six hundred and two thousand, two hundred and forty nine (9,602,249). Data analysis was carried out using descriptive statistics (frequency, percentages, mean, standard deviation) and inferential statistics of regression analysis. Results of the regression analysis at 5% significant level using two-tailed test for all the variables of financial options displayed significant effects on the performance of female businesses in Nigeria. It was recommended that more female-owned businesses should take the advantage of these financial options to enhance business performance as only 38% of them have successfully utilized these financial sources to bridge the finance gap.

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.

This study critically analyzes the micro-, meso- and macro-level factors that influence the female academics to engage in academic entrepreneurship (AE). The extant literature, which seeks to understand the female academics engagement in AE mostly revolves around a gender-comparative lens, where women entrepreneurs are understood only in comparison with men. This study examines the association between informal academic entrepreneurship (IAE) and the level of asymmetry between the micro-, meso- and macro-level factors (5M framework). In this study, the author conducted three interviews with female academics in Bangladesh.

Among the various global options for self-employment, venturing into the micro-enterprise sector has been recognized as an important way for employment generation and poverty alleviation in many developing/emerging economies. In this context, women-owned businesses at the grassroots play a vital role in developing countries like India far beyond contributing to job creation and economic growth. The informal sector is a sizeable and expanding feature of the contemporary global economy.

However, the informal economy operates at the cusp of the institutional framework, which makes them susceptible to many risks like lack of formal financing options, legal aid or increasing margin through access to formal markets. Non-Profit Development Agencies (NPDAs) have emerged as a viable and essential middle ground support in promoting women entrepreneurship in their capacity to contribute beyond governmental institutions.

The study adopted an inductive qualitative option through a case study design to explore the approaches adopted by NPDAs in promoting micro-entrepreneurship among women at the base of the pyramid (BoP) in the urban informal sector in India. The findings suggest that the NPDAs created an impact through the services, which translated into monetary earnings for the entrepreneurs. They could make financial contributions to their families, which boosted their self-confidence and overall personality. The findings also indicate positive changes like increased self-confidence, self-dependence, and inner strength as reported by the entrepreneurs.