Introduction: the ABCs of women’s entrepreneurial identity – aspirations, behaviors and confidence

Abstract

Who am I? This existential question has been central to philosophical pondering since the actual beginning of philosophy. It is largely a question of personal meaning, and one to which early philosophers brought different ideas. Descartes built on Plato, purporting that the soul is the answer to personal identity. Later, John Locke disagreed, maintaining that continuity is the primary issue. His approach was that one starts with a tabula rasa and is subsequently shaped by experience, sensations, reflections, and so on. More recently, research regarding identity has focused on the social aspects, 'Who am I?' in reference to something else: groups

Exploring the Predictors of Chinese College Students’ Entrepreneurial Intention

“…Education and training activities are a good environment to instill confidence and ability in the college students toward demonstrating the needed self-efficacy when it comes to entrepreneurship. Previous studies have also confirmed in line with our findings that entrepreneurial self-efficacy is directly associated with entrepreneurial intention (Ciuchta & Finch, 2019; Doanh & Bernat, 2019; Greene & Brush, 2018; Pollack et al, 2019).…”

“…The positive and significant impact of perceived behavioral control on the student entrepreneurial intention means that the student confidence in startup skills, available and enriched knowledge, and opportunities in their surrounding can influence their decision to engage in entrepreneurial activities. The validated impact of perceived behavioral control on the student entrepreneurial intention is corroborated by previous studies that showed that perceived behavioral control is a predictor of the intention to engage in entrepreneurial activities (Brännback et al, 2018; Doanh & Bernat, 2019; Greene & Brush, 2018; Shabbir et al, 2016; Yang, 2013). In addition, the positive impact of entrepreneurial self-efficacy on college students’ entrepreneurial intention is a testament that engaging students in entrepreneurial activities/tasks have the potential to develop students’ self-efficacy toward entrepreneurial intention.…”

Damsels in distress: Discourses of entrepreneurship in management textbooks

“…It makes sense, then, that understanding gender and identity development is crucial in the creation of knowledge interventions for students. In terms of gender, men, or at least how they are represented in text, naturally connect their internal self-identity with an external masculine entrepreneur identity (Greene and Brush, 2018;Lewis, 2013). Women, on the other hand, are written into text in impossible positions that are far too often constrained by social identities ascribed to them through education, institutional policies or the political, social and economic contexts in which they are located.…”

Gender stereotypes in the angel investment process

“…They pointed out that because entrepreneurial identity is often linked to male behaviors as the ideal stereotype (Ahl, 2006;Bruni et al, 2004), women entrepreneurs may face competing identities, where they will use cultural associations of status-worthiness and competence as cues for self-definition. Because of higher status attached to masculine entrepreneurial values, women entrepreneurs might report masculine values that are similar to their male counterparts (Justo et al, 2018), reproduce masculinized representations of the normative (male) entrepreneur (Marlow and McAdam, 2015) or they may be discouraged from entrepreneurial actions, having less confidence in entrepreneurial skills because of this competing identity (Chen et al, 1998;Greene and Brush, 2018). In sum, while social identity has been used to explain social categorization in the management and entrepreneurship literatures, it is only emerging as a way to better understand the phenomenon of women and early-stage angel financing.…”

“…Less well studied is the connection between social identity and women entrepreneurs. Greene and Brush (2018) examined the current literature on women entrepreneurs and social identity, considering attitudes, behaviors and confidence. They pointed out that because entrepreneurial identity is often linked to male behaviors as the ideal stereotype (Ahl, 2006;Bruni et al, 2004), women entrepreneurs may face competing identities, where they will use cultural associations of status-worthiness and competence as cues for self-definition.…”