Female Entrepreneurship Theory: A Multidisciplinary Review of Resources

Abstract

The author, a legal scholar, reviews academic literature regarding and otherwise relevant to the study of female entrepreneurship from across multiple disciplines. She reports that the legal academy has only minimally engaged in entrepreneurship scholarship and not at all as to female entrepreneurship.

Author reviews the origins of female entrepreneurship literature and the compilations describing the emergence of female entrepreneurship as a business and social phenomenon, the women who undertook and led these endeavors, and changes in the characteristics of women entrepreneurs over time.

She also presents materials in topical sections on business structure, strategy, and performance; culture, sex, and gender; diversity; economic and social development; essentialization and masculine norms; finance; identity issues; innovation and technology; motivation; personal and professional domains; psychology; social capital; and standpoint theory.

Author points out the needs for a unified definitional taxonomy for entrepreneurship; for greater study of innovation-driven entrepreneurship, including as an endeavor of women; for the legal academy to enter the field of entrepreneurship study, including as to female entrepreneurship, to develop a new substantive area of law; and for entrepreneurship scholars to approach their work with interdisciplinarity.

Keywords: entrepreneurship,law,innovation,female,gender,international development,economic development,women,technology,entrepreneur,economics,discrimination,social capital,education,intellectual capital,unpaid work,essentialization,normative standards,business strategy,business formation,business performance

JEL Classification: D30,D40,D6,D8,F02,J1,J2,J7,L2,K00,K22,L1,L52,M13,M14,M54,N01,N30,O2,O3,P12,P17,P4