Contextual Embeddedness of Women's Entrepreneurship

1 Behind the green line

An examination of female entrepreneurial activity in the Muslim world

Banu Goktan, Vishal K. Gupta, Gönül Budak and Erik Markin

Recent years have seen organizations, governments and institutions around the world promote entrepreneurship as a means to economic growth, job creation and social development. A significant part of these efforts focus on women-owned businesses (Brush & Cooper, 2012; Sullivan & Meek, 2012). Despite the widely accepted belief that women’s ability to freely start and grow their business is beneficial for gender equality and economic empowerment (Jennings & Brush, 2013), the gender gap in entrepreneurship – in terms of both the rate of business start-up and venture performance – persists. Individual ...