Research On The Effects Of Institutional Environment On Female Entrepreneurial Activity From The Gender Perspective

Female entrepreneurship is related to women’s economic empowerment and the issues of gender equality.It is not only a significant engine for stimulating economic growth and improving societal well-being,but also a key aspect for achieving the inclusive and sustainable development globally.Nevertheless,entrepreneurship remains heavily male dominated and women entrepreneurs are underrepresented.Furthermore,there are considerable variations in female entrepreneurship across countries.Therefore,the study focuses on female entrepreneurship,particularly how the macro institutional environment in which women operate shape a country’s female entrepreneurship.This topic is of great significance for deeply understanding the cross-national variations in female entrepreneurship,increasing its global level,and improving gender equality in entrepreneurship field.Institutions play a salient role in female entrepreneurship.Currently,scholars tend to focus on the direct effects of general institutional arrangements in the overall entrepreneurial environments on women’s entrepreneurial activity.On the one hand,the focus on general conditions ignores the effects of complex social contexts constructed by gendered institutions on female entrepreneurship.On the other hand,the focus on direct relationships fails to deep understand the complexity of institutions per se and of relationships between institutions and women’s entrepreneurial activity.Therefore,based on the gender perspective,the study highlights the gendered attribute of entrepreneurial institutions,and further explores the internal complex mechanisms that gendered entrepreneurial institutions affect women’s entrepreneurial activity.Drawing upon post-structural feminism and institutional theory,together with the literature review on female entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial institutional environment,the study detailed discusses the related research questions through the following three sub-studies.First of all,based on the post-structural feminism,the first sub-study underlines the viewpoint that gender is constructed,and further explores how a gender aspect hides in regulative,normative,and cognitive dimensions of entrepreneurial institutions.Next,drawing upon the institutional theory,the second sub-study further examines how the three distinct dimensions of gendered entrepreneurial institutions shape female entrepreneurship,so that reveals the differences among effects of three institutional dimensions.Finally,based on the complexity of institutions per se and their complex effects on entrepreneurial activity,the third sub-study highlights the configurational thinking to reveal the causal complexity between gendered entrepreneurial institutions and female entrepreneurship,and further provides several different causal paths for achieving a high level of female entrepreneurship.The study mainly draws the following conclusions through theoretical analysis and empirical analysis.Firstly,the regulative,normative,and cognitive dimensions of entrepreneurial institutions all manifest a hidden gendered nature.The gendered characteristic of regulative dimension is not only reflected in those national laws and regulations as well as industry rules that either fundamentally restrict female entrepreneurship or indirectly hinder women’s access to relevant entrepreneurial resources,but also in some broad general laws and regulations that aimed women,such as maternity leave policy,whose purposes are opposite of encouraging women to start a business.The gendered characteristic of normative dimension is mainly related to the widely existed traditional gender roles and stereotypes in the present world,while the gendered characteristic of cognitive dimension is reflected in the women’s general lack of entrepreneurial knowledge and skills.Secondly,gendered entrepreneurial institutions are significant for explaining the cross-national variations in female entrepreneurship.All three dimensions of gendered entrepreneurial institutions have significant influences on the relative levels of female entrepreneurship,while only regulative and cognitive dimensions are significantly related to the absolute level of female entrepreneurship.Specifically,the regulative dimension has negative impacts,while cognitive dimension has positive impacts.In addition,among the three distinct dimensions,cognitive gendered entrepreneurial institutions have the most important impacts on both levels of female entrepreneurship.Thirdly,based on configurational thinking,there is multiple conjectural causation between gendered entrepreneurial institutions and female entrepreneurship,that is,several alternative causal paths can result in achieving high levels(both absolute and relative level)of female entrepreneurship,and configurations for both two outcomes share high similarity.Furthermore,a high level of gendered entrepreneurial cognitions plays a key role in achieving the high level of female entrepreneurship.The study contributes theoretically by the following three aspects.Firstly,the focus on entrepreneurial institutions not only enriches and deepens the contextual embeddedness study on female entrepreneurship,but also provides a new insight to the related entrepreneurship study.Secondly,the study draws upon the gender perspective that underscored in post-structural feminism to examine the gendered nature of entrepreneurial institutions,enriching the application of post-structural feminism in female entrepreneurship research.Thirdly,the study employs the analytical framework of institutional theory to discuss the impacts of gendered entrepreneurial institutions,not only expanding but also deepening the application of institutional theory in female entrepreneurship research.At the same time,the study also has some practical implications.On the one hand,the introduction of the gender perspective in the study provides various stakeholders with a new insight to deeply understand the phenomenon of female entrepreneurship,particularly the so-called women’s entrepreneurial disadvantages.On the other hand,the findings from configurational analysis provide policymakers with significant implications for designing effective support policies to improve female entrepreneurship.