Towards Emancipatory Aspects of Women’s Entrepreneurship: An Alternative Model of Women’s Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy in Patriarchal Societies

This chapter considers societal gender mechanisms in an effort to shed light on the antecedents of women’s entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE). While numerous studies have repeatedly assessed the relevance of ESE for developing entrepreneurial intentions, making clear that women tend to express significantly lower levels of ESE, there are hardly any contributions dealing with the antecedents of ESE. Social mechanisms resulting from national cultural attitudes appear significant when it comes to this topic. By integrating gender as a category into this investigation, a major focus lies upon the analysis of societal processes of doing gender and its effect on the construction of women’s ESE. A better understanding of this construction process is an important step towards a more gender-sensitive entrepreneurial ecosystem that supports women. The following investigation of German and Danish women entrepreneurs showed that despite a higher rate of gender egalitarianism in their country, Danish women face obstacles similar to those found in Germany on their path towards becoming self-employed. In addition, founding their own business appears to be the result of an overall emancipatory process. The relation between societal processes and the construction of ESE is presented in the model of entrepreneurial self-efficacy in patriarchal structures.