Advancing a Framework for Coherent Research on Women's Entrepreneurship

Current entrepreneurship theory is organised around three basic constructs, namely market, money and management. Specifically, to launch and grow a venture, an entrepreneur needs to have access to markets, money (financial resources) and management (human and organizational capital). Drawing on institutional theory, this paper argues that in order to study women's entrepreneurship, this '3M' framework needs to be modified by including motherhood and the meso as well as the macro environments. 'Motherhood' represents the micro household/family context, which might have a larger impact on women than men, thus highlighting the embeddedness of female entrepreneurs. The meso environment includes the factors which concern intermediate structures and institutions such as occupational networks; all of which in turn affect the access of women to 'money' and 'market'. The macro environment includes considerations beyond the market, such as expectations of society and cultural norms, national strategies and initiatives. This new '5M' perspective (with meso/macro considered as one additional M) offers a 'gender adequate' framework that allows the study of women's entrepreneurship in its own right, and also brings into focus appropriate approaches for its study. As a foundation for this framework, we review academic publications on women's entrepreneurship using the 5M approach. We elaborate this framework and suggest future research directions for women's entrepreneurship. For the academic research community, the 5M framework developed in this paper helps lay a foundation for coherent research on women's entrepreneurship because it takes into account the social embeddedness of women entrepreneurs and considers the multiple levels of influence on their entrepreneurial actions. For the woman entrepreneur, this analysis has implications for understanding the sources of the challenges they face by providing insights on the importance of the interplay of both individual and societal factors that impact on their enterprise. For policy makers, it turns the spotlight on the need for an integrated approach for fostering female entrepreneurs that is not blind to overarching institutionalised social structures and gender asymmetries