Trends of research on women's entrepreneurship on the management of happiness and well-being in organisations

Abstract

Purpose

The management of employee happiness and well-being has been gaining interest in academic research in recent years; however, few studies have focussed on the entrepreneur's perspective. The aim of this paper is to analyse the state of research on women-led businesses, well-being and happiness management.

Design/methodology/approach

A bibliometric study has been carried out since 1996, the first year in which publications in this field were detected. In total, 128 papers are identified in the most reliable database, Web of Science Core Collection. A network mapping of authorship, citation and co-occurrence of keywords in scientific publications is shown.

Findings

The results of this study confirm that societal changes resulting from crises increase research interest in improving organisational environments and happiness. After the economic crises of 2013, there was a boost, and after the pandemic, there is again a boost in research. More than half of the publications and citations on female entrepreneurship and happiness management are post-pandemic. The study offers some research directions and emphasises the role of gender.

Originality/value

This article brings a new approach to the study of well-being in organisations, highlighting the relevance of the role female leadership plays in promoting happiness at work.

Citation

de las Heras-Pedrosa, C., Jambrino-Maldonado, C., Rando-Cueto, D. and Iglesias-Sánchez, P.P. (2024), "Trends of research on women's entrepreneurship on the management of happiness and well-being in organisations", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 43 No. 2, pp. 150-169. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMD-04-2023-0127

1. Introduction

There are two particularly key topics at present in both the scientific and business environments: entrepreneurship and organisational well-being. On the one hand, entrepreneurship is considered an essential activity for the social and economic development of any region (Audretsch et al., 2022; Guzman and Kacperczyk, 2019). However, it is necessary to recognise that this is not a particularly advantageous field for women, as there is still a gender gap, especially in high-tech sectors and start-ups, amongst others (Kuschel, 2019; Spain Startup SouthSummit, 2021). Success measured in terms of profitability and funding raised is compared between men and women-led companies (Audretsch et al., 2022; Johnsen and McMahon, 2005; Robb and Watson, 2012; Setini et al., 2020). Additionally, the discussion on the performance of companies led by men or by women has given rise to the gender underperformance hypothesis (Aidis and Weeks, 2016; Demartini, 2018; Justo et al., 2015; Robb and Watson, 2012; Zolin et al., 2013). This theory argues that it is not feasible to compare the performance of enterprises according to the gender of their promoter, since the motivations, aspirations and needs of entrepreneurship are different. The gap in the development of empirical work in this direction continues to be highlighted in the scientific field (Gatewood et al., 2009; Harris and Jenkins, 2006; Justo et al., 2015). Therefore, the satisfaction of entrepreneurship can be determined by different factors and can also condition the way in which the company is managed in relation to the search for the well-being of the human team and their self-motivation, amongst other factors (Dempsey and Jennings, 2014; Idris, 2009; Johnsen and McMahon, 2005; Kariv, 2012; Robb and Watson, 2012; Zhao, 2005). At the same time, happiness at work is beginning to attract the attention of researchers as a means of maximising the performance of companies and the engagement of employees, managers and the founding team (Fisher, 2010; Jambrino-Maldonado et al., 2022; Kamel et al., 2017; Ravina Ripoll et al., 2019b). Once again, if we delve deeper into this aspect, there is a notable lack of empirical studies that analyse this issue in a disaggregated way or, at least, consider the gender variable of the entrepreneur as a moderator or mediator of corporate happiness. It is precisely the connection between the phenomenon and the literature on female entrepreneurship and corporative happiness that the originality of this bibliometric review lies. Thus, the aim of this work is to make a detailed review of these topics in current scientific production, identifying authors, networks, the most prolific countries, as well as the topics, evolution and connections, in addition to providing an agenda of research and trend priorities in this field.

In terms of the structure of this study, after this introduction, the theoretical framework that contextualises the object of analysis, the method used and the results are presented. Ending with the discussion and conclusions and also providing a series of practical implications to shape the future research agenda, as well as identifying key issues to be addressed to develop knowledge about happiness in the field of entrepreneurship.

2. Theoretical framework

2.1 Does gender influence entrepreneurship?

Women today represent half of the world's population and this distribution follows the same pattern in practically all the nations of the world. Their role in the economy is indisputable and their participation has increased steadily in recent decades (Welter, 2019). Despite progress, milestones towards a gender-equitable society remain incomplete. The priority now is to increase women's career satisfaction by enabling them to reach high-skilled jobs, managerial positions and other positions of responsibility (Dadanlar and Abebe, 2020; Greenhaus and Kossek, 2014).

This reality is not homogeneous, but is affected by the level of development of countries. The largest gaps are found in North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. Political, economic and health crises have exacerbated these gaps, increasing the World Economic Forum's (2023) estimate from 100 to 132 years (The World Bank, 2023).

On the other hand, women's participation in the economy involves promoting a balance between domestic and work responsibilities, especially in terms of caring for children and other dependents (De Clercq et al., 2022; Greenhaus and Kossek, 2014).

All these lines of debate give rise to the Empower Women movement. This is not a feminist approach but rather an awareness that the growth of the global economy requires a commitment to improving the lives of the entire population, and this implies concentrating efforts on developing the potential of the women's collective.

The relationship between gross domestic product and the effective incorporation of women into the labour force is well documented, but beyond this generality, institutions warn that gender differences can lead to different economic and social outcomes (The World Bank, 2023; World Economic Forum, 2023). This recognition motivates the design of aid policies that ensure a more balanced distribution of growth between men and women.

As a consequence of such policies in recent years there has been an increase in the growth of women workers, especially women entrepreneurs worldwide (Rastogi et al., 2022; Welsh et al., 2018; Welsh et al., 2016b; Zainol and Al Mamun, 2018).

In this study, women's entrepreneurship is understood as women-led business, it means women hold the highest level of management and ownership of the company as promoters. Nevertheless, this does not mean that the management and founding team is only composed of women. However, the following circumstances must be complied with: (1) women have dominant financial control over their enterprise, (2) women are founders, exclusively or with a team, of the company, (3) women have equity in their company's capital, (4) women manage the company and earn profits with their activity.

Assuming the clear female contribution to the economy in general and to entrepreneurship in particular, a prolific line of discussion has opened up in recent years on whether there are gender-based differences in the strategy and management of start-ups (Dempsey and Jennings, 2014; Idris, 2009; Johnsen and McMahon, 2005). By extension, the need for disaggregated analysis of entrepreneurship performance is increased by its implications also at the level of policy design and scientific research in the field of women's entrepreneurship (Kariv, 2012; Robb and Watson, 2012; Zhao, 2005). The growing concern for gender mainstreaming has led to the emergence of the aforementioned gender underperformance hypothesis (Aidis and Weeks, 2016; Demartini, 2018; Justo et al., 2015; Robb and Watson, 2012; Zolin et al., 2013). Consequently, this research work focusses on female entrepreneurship as a particular reality with a nature and determining factors that deserve to be analysed in a differentiated way.

2.2 Irruption of corporative and entrepreneurial happiness

Concepts such as Happiness, well-being or wellness are of growing interest to companies worldwide because of the link between employee well-being and profitability. Happier employees are directly related to lower turnover in their jobs and lower absenteeism (Hernández García de Velazco et al., 2020; Robertson and Cooper, 2011). The World Health Organization (2020) describes the company as a healthy place, enabling employers and their employees to have greater well-being and more control over their own health in order to be more positive and happy.

Happiness and work have for many years been regarded as completely exclusive terms (Kamel et al., 2017). However, recent studies have shown that happiness at work is a state applied to the individual, team or organisation that allows for maximising performance (Fisher, 2010; Jambrino-Maldonado et al., 2022; Ravina Ripoll et al., 2022). The enhancement of happiness and well-being in the work environment allows, therefore, to maximise performance, achieve greater job satisfaction and job engagement (Ravina Ripoll et al., 2019b) but above all enjoyment of work (Vacharkulksemsuk and Fredrickson, 2013). Therefore, a happy employee is more participative, is interested in the smooth running of the company and improves the level of production. In the same way, the happy entrepreneur transmits peace of mind and, above all, well-being to the team (Jambrino-Maldonado et al., 2022; Kamel et al., 2017; Ravina Ripoll et al., 2019a).

Whilst the academic approach to business management from the perspective of happiness and well-being is often limited to aspects related to employees and the organisation (Dominko and Verbič, 2019) in many cases forgetting to analyse the management of happiness and well-being from the perspective of the entrepreneur or the entrepreneur as the leader of the company. If a gender perspective is added to this, the studies are even fewer.

In view of the growing interest in and development of this line of research on happiness at work, together with the gap detected in the field of female entrepreneurship, the starting point for this approach is the increase of literature that emphasises and contributes to economic development and well-being by women entrepreneurs (Civera and Meoli, 2023; Ozkazanc-Pan and Clark Muntean, 2021). With regard to women entrepreneurship, several studies show that women have higher levels of job satisfaction than men (Carree and Verheul, 2012) as the perception of well-being differs according to the gender of the entrepreneur (Welsh et al., 2016a). In the case of female-led start-ups, it is claimed that women report higher levels of happiness and job satisfaction (Gazioglu and Tansel, 2006; Jennings et al., 2013; Zainol and Al Mamun, 2018). On the other hand, men see success as gaining prestige or recognition, whereas women perceive the implementation of their plan as a triumph (Joona, 2018; Staniewski and Awruk, 2019) one of their goals being to create growth-oriented enterprises (Civera and Meoli, 2023) This may be one reason why women are more satisfied with their income despite the fact that they may have a lower monthly turnover (Carree and Verheul, 2012; Hmieleski and Sheppard, 2019; Sastre-Castillo et al., 2015).

Another aspect to bear in mind is that higher organisational performance does not directly correlate with higher happiness of leaders. Clearly, business performance increases satisfaction with income growth but it usually means lower well-being with respect to leisure time (Reuschke, 2019; Terrell and Troilo, 2010). This issue is a key point in this research work because in the entrepreneurship literature there is an wide discussion about performance in women's and men's companies under the so-called the gender underperformance hypothesis (Demartini, 2018; Justo et al., 2015; Robb and Watson, 2012; Zolin et al., 2013). Based on this theory performance should be differentiated and analysed according to the gender of their promoters due to the fact that women and men do not have the same approach towards their entrepreneurship and, consequently, performance cannot be compared. Therefore, if aspirations and ambitions are different, the way the performance of each group is measured should also be different (Gatewood et al., 2009; Justo et al., 2015) and particularly focussing on performance and happiness.

In short, women entrepreneurs are happier with the business than men are (Karageorghis et al., 2021) and although their businesses have a lower failure rate they may opt for exit earlier when they are dissatisfied (Khandelwal and Sehgal, 2018).

Supporting the elimination of the entrepreneurial gender gap therefore contributes directly to equality, inclusive economic growth and the well-being and happiness of organisational members. There is an unmet need in research related to the study of the impact of gender on happiness at work (Jackson, 2014).

The main objective of this paper is to show the state of research regarding women entrepreneurship, well-being environments and happiness management in organisations: the evolution of scientific activity, current trends in authorship, topics and future setting research agenda.

3. Methodology

The bibliometric study was based on scientific publications related to entrepreneurship and women related to happiness, well-being and wellness. The study has been based on the scientometric tools and indicators (Chen, 2017; Dominko and Verbič, 2019; de las Heras-Pedrosa et al., 2022). The source of information chosen was the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection database. WoS was selected as the search engine since it is the most widely accepted and frequently employed database for analysis of scientific publications (Ram, 2018). This database accurately and reliably collects (Martínez et al., 2015; Sánchez-Núñez et al., 2020) the records of journals indexed by impact. On the other hand, there are a large number of analysis tools to analyse them. Bibliometric indicators make it possible to analyse the scientific activity seen from different perspectives. There is a great variety of typologies, according to the different objectives of the evaluation. In this work, indicators of production, co-occurrence, visibility, impact and collaboration were used and the works were analysed in the period from 1996 to 2023. The keywords and the search string are formulated according to the logic of the WoS database. As shown in the flowchart in Figure 1, a total of 128 have been selected that meet all the conditions set.

The selected articles were analysed with the VOSviewer software, version 1.6.19, as a methodological tool to construct and visualise networks and to elaborate bibliometric maps that facilitate the global understanding of the semantic and conceptual structure of the research field (Hou and Yu, 2023; Maryanti et al., 2023).

From the analysis of bibliometric networks with VOSviewer, visual representations are extracted on female entrepreneurship related to happiness, well-being and wellness and in relation to: authorship, citation, temporality of the lines of research, universities and research centres or geographical areas where most production is generated (van Eck and Waltman, 2010; Handayani et al., 2022; de las Heras-Pedrosa et al., 2022; Rando-Cueto et al., 2023).

The described methodology provides the scientific community with a quantitative and visual representation of the most productive and highly cited lines of research and the latest trends (van Eck and Waltman, 2017; Jambrino-Maldonado et al., 2022; Rando-Cueto et al., 2022).

4. Results

The articles found on entrepreneurship and women related to happiness, well-being and wellness in the Core Collection database of Web of Sciences amount to a total of 128. The first publication that meets the search criteria is from 1996, and until 2010, only a maximum of one publication per year is detected and it is from 2011 when an increase can be observed. But there is not really a significant line for research in this area until 2021, which is the year with the highest scientific production with 23 articles (Figure 2).

On the other hand, the evolution of citations (Figure 2) reflects an exponential growth from 2015 onwards of the concepts of happiness and well-being in articles related to entrepreneurship and women,

4.1 Report

In the citation report (Table 1), 2,542 citations were reached out of the total of 128 publications analysed. This figure differs greatly according to the period of time analysed, as it is from 2015 onwards where exponential growth can be seen (Figure 2). The average number of citations per article is over 19.86, indicating that the topic is of interest to the scientific community. The H index, based on the ranking of the papers with the highest number of citations, is 23.

Figure 3 shows the distribution of articles in a number of knowledge areas in which the main WoS database classifies its records. In this case, the most important category of the selected articles is Business, Management and Economics. A significant fact is the area of Women Studies with a minority weight.

The research has been disseminated through high quality scientific journals, most of them in the first quartile of Scopus or Clarivate. Table 2 lists the 14 scientific journals that have published more than 2 articles. At the top of the ranking are the journals: International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship, Frontiers in Psychology and Small Business Economics. On the other hand, journals such as Journal of Business Venturing, Journal of Business Research or International Small Business Journal-Researching Entrepreneurship, despite publishing only two articles each, are at the top of the ranking in terms of average citation per article.

4.2 Keywords analysis

The keywords chosen by researchers for their manuscripts, as well as the analysis of co-occurrence through the visual representation of term networks provided by VOSviewer, allows the predominant themes in published research to be determined.

With the keywords of the 128 articles selected from the main WoS database that meet the selection criteria, the graph in Figure 4 is obtained. The words “entrepreneurship”, “women entrepreneurship”, “gender” and “women” are directly related to “well-being” and “happiness”. These clusters are related to other clusters such as “micro enterprise” or “women empowerment”. Although less recurrent, other clusters are those corresponding to “tourism” or “family firm”.

The co-occurrence of keyword maps determinate the number of articles in which they have appeared together in titles, abstracts and keywords. Co-word analysis consists of measuring the co-occurrences or joint occurrences of two terms in a given text for the purpose of identifying the conceptual and thematic structure of a scientific field.

The word cloud depicted in Figure 5 shows the terms depending on the “total link strength”. In this case it can be seen that “happiness” or “well-being” are strongly represented, but a new one appears with a lot of strength and that is “lifestyle”. The terms “entrepreneurship” and “micro enterprise” stand out in entrepreneurship and gender represented by “women”, “gender” or “women entrepreneurship”.

In short, there is a strong relationship between women entrepreneurs and their particular form of entrepreneurship, always taking happiness, well-being and lifestyle into account.

With regard to the temporalisation of the use of keywords by researchers, VOSviewer represents, on a scale ranging from 2013 to 2023, average publication year for each of these keywords (Figure 6). Terms such as “entrepreneurship” are in the 2016 average year. Whilst the introduction of the association with “women” is from 2015. As can be seen in the figure, researchers are beginning to use new terms such as “women entrepreneurship” or “gender” (light green), which represent the year 2019. Concepts related to “well-being” are related to it since 2018 whilst “happiness” is from 2019.

Figure 7 shows the cluster “women entrepreneurship” (Figure 7a) and a new keyword that will appear strongly in 2022, “lifestyle” (Figure 7b), represented by the yellow colour.

Analysing the first case “women entrepreneurship” (Figure 7a) shows that its co-occurrence relationship with a stronger link is with terms such as “entrepreneurship”, “self-employed”, “gender”, “well-being” and “happiness”. Two terms “tourism” and “gender equality”, both from the year 2020, also have a strong relationship with this case.

We consider it is important to analyse the second case, “lifestyle” (Figure 7b) because, although it is a very recent keyword (year 2022), it is already very strong with its links. Its relationship coincides with “women entrepreneurship” and with “entrepreneurship”, “gender”, “well-being” and “happiness”. In addition to these, lifestyle is linked to coronavirus, wellness or Young. The average year of publication is 2021.

4.3 Authorship analysis

In the field of research on women entrepreneurship and happiness, there are influential authors in this area of study, both in terms of the number of articles published and, above all, the number of citations their work has received. Table 3 shows the articles by researchers with the highest number of citations published in quality scientific journals.

The emergence of very specific research clusters that collaborate with each other is evident in Figure 8. The authors who lead these clusters in turn head other networks in different fields. These researchers do not always correspond to those with the highest scientific output, although they are amongst the most influential. In this sense, Saroj Parasuraman (Drexel University, USA) heads the ranking of citations, whilst his colleague Claire A. Simmers (Saint Joseph's University, USA) followed by Dianne Welsh (University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA) and Eugene Kaciak (Kozminski University, Poland) with 2, 1, 4 and 4 articles published on the subject respectively.

Table 3 shows that the two articles published by Parasuraman are the most cited. The second most cited is the one co-authored with Simmers. In the case of Welsh and Kaciak, they also share co-authorship in three of their four articles on the subject.

Small Business Economics with 4 publications and an average number of publications from 2016 is at the top of the ranking along with Frontiers in Psychology with 4 papers from 2020. It is followed by Sustainability with 2 manuscripts from 2020 and the Journal of Enterprising Communities and the International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research also with two publications from 2022.

4.4 Analysis of main co-authorships-countries/organisations and number of records

From the analysis by countries with the highest scientific production and links between them (Figure 9), the United States of America (42) and England (16) stand out, followed by the Netherlands (8) and Spain (6) as the territories with the highest number of manuscripts published in relation to the object of study. These areas are followed by Sweden (5), South Africa (5), Australia (4), Scotland (4) and Poland (4).

Although it depends on each territory, relations between the most productive countries are frequent, involving important networks of scientific collaboration between nations.

As for the affiliations of the authors, Figure 10 shows the joint work between institutions. Thus, the interrelationship between universities can be observed. The cluster led by the University of Illinois, USA (3 papers, blue) serves as a link between the cluster of Iowa State University, USA (3 articles, purple) and that of the University of Vermont, USA (2 manuscripts, red) (see Figure 11.

5. Discussion and conclusions

Based on the results obtained, in recent years there has been an exponential growth in the scientific literature on aspects related to female entrepreneurship, happiness and lifestyles.

In line with Olsson and Bernhard (2021) and Dewi Sat Tanti et al. (2021), female entrepreneurship is crucial in today's society. The way in which women carry out the leadership and management of the company achieves greater cooperation, creativity (Bhat and Sisodia, 2016) and empathy (Mestre et al., 2009). All this improves the well-being of their employees and leads to greater productivity in their projects. It is essential to analyse these entrepreneurs in aspects related to education and training in sustainable entrepreneurship, but above all in the business-woman-family relationship (Parasuraman et al., 1996) where the role of women is currently fundamental.

Once the results of the study have been verified, most of the manuscripts are theoretical or rather focused, in general there are no global studies. Previous research has shown that leadership style is a key factor in explaining happiness at work (Salas-Vallina et al., 2017). However, although there are signs of a take-off, there is still little empirical research related to the study of the impact of gender on happiness at work and that allows for a deeper understanding of its impact on organisational well-being. Likewise, the contribution of this research work allows to advance in the line of the gender underperformance hypothesis (Demartini, 2018; Zolin et al., 2013) due the importance of happiness as outcome of women entrepreneurship should be added and further analysed.

Opinion mining and bibliometric analyses are guiding future research in fields of knowledge, in this case on female entrepreneurship and well-being and happiness. Their aim is to offer a scenario with which to evaluate the research carried out and to check how it evolves over time. New terms have emerged from the analysis, such as lifestyle, which is gaining momentum after the coronavirus pandemic, and it would be of interest to consider possible studies to complete the scientific production. It also raises the need for multidisciplinary research to define new lines not only for economic growth but also to promote a working environment that allows the development of people in the organisation.

It is clear from the results obtained that the areas of business, economics and management account for two-thirds of the publications. The area of psychology and analysis of psychosocial aspects is less reflected. In terms of countries, the networks of North American authors, the first to address this subject, stand out. Parasuraman, as well as being a pioneering author, is the author with the highest number of citations.

The manuscripts analysed have shown the relevant role that female entrepreneurship and gender equality play in organisational well-being is evident. For this reason frequent relationships are detected between the regions with the highest number of published papers, giving rise to important networks of scientific collaboration between nations. It is necessary to give visibility to women leaders and favour their access and leadership positions in the organisational market. A close relationship has been observed between women entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship, always taking into account happiness, well-being and lifestyle.

The results confirm that after the global crisis there is again a boost in scientific research on the subject, although there is a lack of empirical work on the gender of the leader in well-being and happiness at work. Other more general aspects such as gender studies on self-employment or rural and training aspects are also lacking.

One of the limitations of this work is the choice of the Web of Science Core Collection as the only database for the bibliometric analysis and the use of the VOSviewer tool for data mining and visualisation. It was decided to use a database that offered a collection with a greater number of quality publications and whose sample met the proposed objectives.

Figures

Figure 1

Flowchart of the bibliographic search and selection process

Figure 2

Evolution of publications and citations over time

Figure 3

Thematic areas

Figure 4

Map of keyword co-occurrence

Figure 5

Word cloud of terms

Figure 6

Average publication year

Figure 7

Average publication year women entrepreneurship and lifestyle

Figure 8

Evolution of author citations

Figure 9

Journal documents' average publications

Figure 10

Countries co-occurrence map

Figure 11

Organisations co-occurrence map

Table 1

Citation report

Citation report
Publications	128
Times cited	2,542
Citation average per item	19.86
H-Index	23

Source(s): Authors' own work

Table 2

Report on the impact of journals

Journals	No. articles	Citations	Citation average per item	Rank by journal citation indicator 2021* (clarivate)	CiteScore rank 2021* (scopus)
International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship	6	76	12.66	Q2	Q1
Frontiers in Psychology	4	27	6.75	Q1	Q2
Small Business Economics	4	79	19.75	Q1	Q1
International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research	3	2	0.66	Q1	Q1
Journal of Enterprising Communities-People and Places in the Global Economy	3	8	2.66	Q2	Q1
Sustainability	3	16	5.33	Q2	Q1
European Journal of Cultural Studies	2	7	3.5	Q1	Q1
Gender Work and Organisation	2	28	14	Q1	Q1
International Review of Entrepreneurship	2	24	12	Q4	–
International Small Business Journal-Researching Entrepreneurship	2	53	26.5	Q2	Q1
Journal of Business Research	2	44	26.5	Q1	Q1
Journal of Business Venturing	2	60	30	Q1	Q1
Journal of Public Policy Marketing	2	19	9.5	Q1	Q1
Tourism Review International	2	15	7.5	Q3	Q3

Note(s): *At the date of the study (2023) the two databases analysed still have the ranking for the year 2021

Source(s): Authors' own creation

Table 3

Articles with the highest number of citations

Authors-year	Articles	Sources	WoS JCI	Scopus	Citations
Parasuraman et al. (1996)	Work and family variables, entrepreneurial career success, and psychological well-being	Journal of Vocational Behaviour	Q1	Q1	418
Parasuraman and Simmers (2001)	Type of employment, work-family conflict and well-being: a comparative study	Journal of Organizational Behavior	Q1	Q1	367
Carree and Verheul (2012)	What Makes Entrepreneurs Happy? Determinants of Satisfaction Among Founders	Journal of Happiness Studies	Q1	Q1	76
Tlaiss (2015)	How Islamic Business Ethics Impact Women Entrepreneurs: Insights from Four Arab Middle Eastern Countries	Journal of Business Ethics	Q1	Q1	75
Hmieleski and Sheppard (2019)	The Yin and Yang of entrepreneurship: Gender differences in the importance of communal and agentic characteristics for entrepreneurs' subjective well-being and performance	Journal of Business Venturing	Q1	Q1	53
Sastre-Castillo et al. (2015)	What Is Different about the Profile of the Social Entrepreneur?	Nonprofit Management and Leadership	Q2	Q2	46
Sevä et al. (2016)	Subjective well-being among the self-employed in Europe: macroeconomy, gender and immigrant status	Small Business Economics	Q1	Q1	43
Welsh, Memili et al. (2016)	An empirical analysis of the impact of family moral support on Turkish women entrepreneurs	Journal of Innovation and Knowledge	Q1	Q1	36
Jennings et al. (2013)	When Family Members Are Also Business Owners: Is Entrepreneurship Good for Families?	Family Relations	Q1	Q1	36
Reuschke (2019)	The subjective well-being of homeworkers across life domains	Environment and Planning A-Economy and Space	Q1	Q1	33
Lofstrom (2013)	Does self-employment increase the economic well-being of low-skilled workers?	Small Business Economics	Q1	Q1	30
Altan-Olcay (2014)	Entrepreneurial Subjectivities and Gendered Complexities: Neoliberal Citizenship in Turkey	Feminist Economics	Q1	Q1	29
Markantoni and van Hoven (2012)	Bringing “invisible” side activities to light. A case study of rural female entrepreneurs in the Veenkolonien, the Netherlands	Journal of Rural Studies	Q1	Q1	27
Dadanlar and Abebe (2020)	Female CEO leadership and the likelihood of corporate diversity misconduct: Evidence from S&P 500 firms	Journal of Business Research	Q1	Q1	24
Karageorghis et al. (2021)	Physical activity and mental well-being under COVID-19 lockdown: a cross-sectional multination study	BMC Public Health	Q1	Q1	23
Eversole (2004)	Change makers? Women's microenterprises in a Bolivian city	Gender Work and Organisation	Q1	Q1	23
Khandelwal and Sehgal (2018)	Exploring work-family interface for Indian women entrepreneurs	Gender in Management	Q2	Q2	22
Welsh et al. (2016a)	Influence of stages of economic development on women entrepreneurs' start-ups	Journal of Business Research	Q1	Q1	22
Rahman et al. (2016)	Enhancing the Wellbeing of Base of the Pyramid Entrepreneurs through Business Success: The Role of Private Organisations	Social Indicators Research	Q1	Q1	22
Terrell and Troilo (2010)	Values and female entrepreneurship	International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship	Q2	Q1	21

Source(s): Authors' own creation