Are Women More Likely to Pursue Social and Environmental Entrepreneurship?

Little is known about whether social entrepreneurship and ecopreneurship are ‘gendered’ similar to the mainstream concept of entrepreneurship (Bruni et al., 2004a). This omission is surprising given that females seem to be key targets (Pestoff, 2000; Phillips, 2005; Zahra et al., 2009) and agents (Braun, 2010; McKya et al., 2010) of the social entrepreneurship and ecopreneurship strategies promoted around the globe. Moreover, scholars have recently claimed that adopting a feminist analytical lens can help reframe the current conceptualization of entrepreneurship from a mere economic activity to a more complex phenomenon and catalyst for social change (Calás et al., 2009). De Bruin et al. (2007) call for female entrepreneurship research that incorporates a theoretical approach which emphasizes the role of personal ambitions, and normative and societal environments. This study seeks to fill these gaps by taking into account gender role theory and hegemonic masculinity to investigate the extent to which the social and environmental goals and practices of entrepreneurs are gendered

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