Editorial

Citation

Henry, C. (2009), "Editorial", International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship, Vol. 1 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijge.2009.40901aaa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship, Volume 1, Issue 1

Welcome to the inaugural issue of the International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship (IJGE). In this first issue, we bring together leading edge research contributions on gender and entrepreneurship from scholars around the globe. Beginning with an analysis of the prerequisites for new venture creation and growth, Candida Brush, Anne de Bruin and Friederike Welter lay the theoretical foundation for this inaugural issue by presenting a gender-aware framework for women’s entrepreneurship. Their “5M” perspective makes explicit the social embeddedness of women entrepreneurs and considers the multiple levels of influence on their entrepreneurial actions. For the academic research community, the 5M framework developed in this paper helps lay a foundation for coherent research on women’s entrepreneurship. For women entrepreneurs, this analysis has implications for understanding the sources of the challenges they face by providing insights into the importance of the interplay of both individual and societal factors that impact on their enterprise. For policy makers, the framework highlights the need for an integrated approach for fostering female entrepreneurs that recognises overarching institutionalised social structures and gender asymmetries.

Eleanor Shaw, Susan Marlow, Wing Lam and Sara Carter then discuss the interplay between gender, the accumulation of entrepreneurial capital and firm performance. Using matched sample data, their paper considers how gender shapes the accumulation of entrepreneurial capital and discusses the implications of variances in entrepreneurial capital on business performance. Their findings identify the importance of the interplay between economic, human, social and symbolic capital, suggesting that our understanding of the accumulation and impact of entrepreneurial capital on firm performance can be advanced by recognising the convertible nature of entrepreneurial capital. Their paper also draws attention to the impact of work, life and educational experiences on the accumulation of entrepreneurial capital. Specifically, the paper identifies gender as a critical influence and suggests that the relationship between these experiences, gender and engagement in entrepreneurship should be more fully recognised by policy makers and government initiatives designed to encourage and support entrepreneurship.

John Watson, Rick Newby and Annie Mahuka’s paper focuses on the link between the availability of finance and SME growth, from both the supply and demand side, for female as well as male SME owners in Western Australia. Based on a series of focus groups and a large mail survey of SME owners, their study adds to the limited available evidence concerning the importance of various demand-side issues to SME owners considering accessing external funding. Interestingly, their findings provide no evidence to suggest that a supply-side finance gap exists within the Australian SME sector. Nor is there evidence that Australian SME owners (particularly female owners) are being discouraged from applying for loans from a financial institution because they believe their application will be rejected. The results suggest that other demand-side issues (particularly risk-taking propensity and desire to maintain control) play a more important role in the capital structure decision making of SME owners than concerns about their loan application being rejected. The paper suggests that financial advisers need to be sensitive to various demand-side issues when advising SME owners about the merits of applying for external funding.

Staying with the financial theme, Teresa Nelson, Sylvia Maxfield and Deborah Kolb’s article discusses how women entrepreneurs identify and manage the gendered landscape in their interactions with venture capitalists in the USA. Using a grounded theory case method approach and drawing on interviews with women entrepreneurs regarding their experiences of venture capital funding negotiations, their study considers how second generation gender assumptions – the cultural assumptions and work practices that appear natural and neutral but can often have differential impacts on women and men – impact female entrepreneurs’ decisions, negotiations and interactions with venture capitalists. The authors consider how women entrepreneurs gained, lost, or surrendered attempts to attain venture capital to fund their businesses during the period 2002-2008. Their findings suggest that women entrepreneurs vary in the degree to which they identify the gendered landscape that they are navigating, and the strategic decisions that the management of this landscape entails. Furthermore, female entrepreneurs also seem to engage in a learning process, either directly through experience, or indirectly through mentoring, in acquiring the necessary insights to recognize the landscape and to decide how to deal with it. Their research has implications for women entrepreneurs as well as venture capitalists.

The IJGE also contains a “Practitioner section” which will appeal to those working to encourage, support and enable women entrepreneurs. One of the articles in this section is a paper by Julie Weeks on women business owners in the Middle East and North Africa. Winner of the Prowess 2008 “Best Practitioner Paper,” Julie’s five-country research study included face-to-face interviews with women entrepreneurs in Bahrain, Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates. The paper offers an unprecedented level of new detailed information about women business owners and their enterprises in the region. The findings revealed that the women surveyed were operating across a range of business sectors and, in some cases, with employment levels ahead of most women-owned firms in Western Europe and North America. Most of the women surveyed were trading internationally and were growth oriented. Julie’s research offers valuable practical insights for policy makers, women’s business organizations and financial institutions.

The practitioner section also includes a guru interview with Marsha Firestone, founder and president of the Women Presidents’ Organization (WPO), USA. The interview offers fascinating insights into Marsha’s views on entrepreneurial women and their leadership strategies, as well as the work of the WPO. The WPO serves as an advocate and resource for accomplished women entrepreneurs. At their three-day annual conference, delegates have an opportunity to learn from highly successful CEOs and experts, engage in interactive workshops and share their experiences with other accomplished entrepreneurs from across North America, Peru and the UK. The 2008 conference, held in Boston, focused on innovation and how women presidents of multi-million dollar companies can maintain a competitive edge. The 2009 WPO conference takes place on April 23-25 in Coronado, CA.

We would like to take this opportunity to offer our sincere thanks to our Editorial Advisory Board whose expertise is helping to establish this journal as a leading edge research platform for rigorous scholarly work of international standing. IJGE will publish theoretically or empirically based research articles, practitioner papers, research notes, teaching cases and conference reports, with all submissions undergoing a rigorous double blind review process. We are particularly keen to platform the work of dynamic young researchers or “emerging scholars.” Thus, we invite you to contact us to discuss potential articles, or visit the journal’s web site for submission guidelines. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this first issue of IJGE!

Colette Henry