Journal Article
Gendered Institutions and Cross-National Patterns of Business Creation for Men and Women

In this article, we explore how gendered entrepreneurship rates are affected by both soft (values, beliefs and expectations) and hard (institutionalized norms and practices) measures of cultural institutions. We use data from the 2001 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor for 25 265 individuals in 11 countries to examine how institutional arrangements related to women's employment (role of occupational segregation, gender wage inequality, female business leadership and public childcare support) interact with individual-level perceptions in ways that increase women's start-up. Controlling for national variations in opportunity structure, our results show that gendered institutions (female business leadership, gender wage inequality and public expenditures on childcare) influence the decision to start a business indirectly through perceptions and gender.