Entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial intention: Do female students benefit?

Abstract

This article explores links between entrepreneurship education (EE) participation, alertness and risk-taking skills and the intensity of entrepreneurial intention relating to becoming an entrepreneur. Guided by insights from human capital and socially learned stereotypes theories, we conceptualize and test novel hypotheses that consider the potential moderating effect of gender and participation in EE. Business students participating in EE modules were compared with engineering students excluded from such programmes. Hierarchical regression analysis revealed that EE students reported high intensity of intention; however, EE did not generate equal benefits for all students. Women were significantly less likely to report high intensity of intention; however, those citing the alertness skill were more likely to report high intensity of intention than non-EE women students. Both male EE and non-EE students citing the risk perception skill reported higher intention, whereas women EE students citing the risk perception skill reported lower intention.

Impact of Entrepreneurship Training on Entrepreneurial Efficacy and Alertness among Adolescent Youth

“…Other authors have found that for females, having a role model can help boost their entrepreneurial self-efficacy (Barnir et al, 2011). In any case, our study provides further support to account for gender heterogeneity in future work (Westhead and Solesvik, 2016).…”

Attitude of university students to entrepreneurship

“…EE the students with self-confidence, enterprise skills and knowledge are assumed to be able to deal with uncertainty, address social and institutional factors, and make informed decisions. Students are provided with theory, techniques and tools to take risks, and with new approaches to collect and analyse information (Westhead & Solesvik, 2016). Welsh et al (2016) stated that entrepreneurship education at university must develop proper attitudes, motives, intentions and grit to meet failure with a determination to start all over again and win.…”

Environmental incentives of entrepreneurship: Fuzzy clustering approach to OECD countries

“…In several other studies, this relationship between education and entrepreneurship has been discussed within the effects of some moderator variables. Westhead and Solesvik (2015) have examined the positive role of entrepreneurship education on intentions and also considered the gendered ascriptions and its moderating effect. In addition to gender, type of courses, field of study, self-efficacy or past entrepreneurial experience have been evaluated as moderator variables in several studies (Fayolle et al 2006;Piperopoulos and Dimov 2015;Teixeira and Forte 2016).…”