Female entrepreneurship in the digital era

Social media business networks and SME performance: A rural–urban comparative analysis

“…Interestingly, women‐led businesses in rural areas are less likely to participate in social media business networks since the result shows that rural SMEs that are non‐members of social media business networks are more likely to be women‐led businesses (WOMEN) compared to rural firms with network membership. In rural areas, women‐led businesses are traditionally related to digital disadvantages due to digital inequalities, in terms of lower access, skills and self‐perceptions in relation to digital technologies, compared to men‐led businesses (Ughetto et al., 2020). Considering the two largest regional economies in the UK, urban SMEs that participate in the online business networks are more likely to be located in London and the South East compared to rural counterparts.…”

“…Thus, this analysis also includes this variable by dividing into micro, small and medium businesses to control for differences in business characteristics (Phillipson et al., 2019). Additionally, women‐led businesses are controlled in the analysis since they are often found to register lower business performance (Maioli et al., 2020) and lower levels of ICT competence (Ughetto et al., 2020). For business types, family businesses are used in the analysis since they are mainly located in rural areas (Phillipson et al, 2000).…”

On the Relationship between Economic Dynamics and Female Entrepreneurship: Reflections for the Visegrad Countries

“…Women are also influenced to become entrepreneurs by both necessity-driven factors, such as unemployment (McGowan et al 2012;Ng and Fu 2018); and by opportunity-driven factors, such as the need for independence (Holmen et al 2011;Lawter et al 2016). More recently, Ughetto et al (2019) saw, in new digital technologies, an opportunity for the development of women's entrepreneurship and, thus, the reduction of the disparity in entrepreneurship between men and women. Summing up, some of the factors explaining the gender gap in entrepreneurship are female-related and others are gender-neutral.…”

Spatialities of entrepreneurial ecosystems

“…In recent years, empirical research has substantially helped to fill the knowledge gap regarding gender and entrepreneurship in entrepreneurial ecosystems in different domains: First, studies focused more on women as entrepreneurs in those systems (Ali et al, 2019;Lawson, 2019), second, scholars revealed differences in entrepreneurial practices between and towards male and female entrepreneurs (Simmons et al, 2019;Sperber & Linder, 2019) third, potential discrimination and social exclusion of minority groups such as women or migrant entrepreneurs were covered (Neumeyer et al, 2019; and fourth, opportunities to increase female entrepreneurship through digital technologies were covered (Ughetto et al, 2020). With this focus on female actors in networks of EEs and the focus on access to resources for those entrepreneurial segments, this strand of the debate implicitly perceives EEs as a social field where female actors such as women entrepreneurs form a perspective of perception and social construction.…”

“…The low number of female entrepreneurs in entrepreneurial ecosystems indicates that this social category may play an important role at different entrepreneurial crossroads (Genome, 2019; Hechavarria & Ingram, 2019) and hints at potential barriers to or discrimination against female participation in those systems–not only with regard to entrepreneurs but also with regard to other important ecosystem actors such as investors or entrepreneurial advisors (Brush et al., 2019). In recent years, empirical research has substantially helped to fill the knowledge gap regarding gender and entrepreneurship in entrepreneurial ecosystems in different domains: First, studies focused more on women as entrepreneurs in those systems (Ali et al., 2019; Lawson, 2019), second, scholars revealed differences in entrepreneurial practices between and towards male and female entrepreneurs (Simmons et al., 2019; Sperber & Linder, 2019) third, potential discrimination and social exclusion of minority groups such as women or migrant entrepreneurs were covered (Neumeyer et al., 2019; Spigel et al., 2020) and fourth, opportunities to increase female entrepreneurship through digital technologies were covered (Ughetto et al., 2020). With this focus on female actors in networks of EEs and the focus on access to resources for those entrepreneurial segments, this strand of the debate implicitly perceives EEs as a social field where female actors such as women entrepreneurs form a perspective of perception and social construction.…”