Cultures of Female Entrepreneurship

Abstract

The present research shows how entrepreneurial culture contributes to the widely noted difference in entrepreneurial propensities between men and women. The consequences of the assumed differential importance of household and family generate testable hypotheses about the gender effects of entrepreneurial culture.The principal hypothesis is that there is a greater chance of females in 'unentrepreneurial' cultures being relatively entrepreneurial compared to males. Also women from different entrepreneurial cultures show greater similarity of behaviour (lower variance) than men. But proportionate gender gaps within entrepreneurial cultures are less than those between males of different cultures.These hypotheses are tested on US immigrant data from the 2000 census and are not rejected.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Culture, Gender, Migrants

JEL Classification: D01; J15; J23; J61; J16