Women and Global Entrepreneurship: Contextualising Everyday Experiences

Entrepreneurship in context has been described as the third wave in entrepreneurship research. Accordingly, specific socio-economic, political, market, and institutional contexts are key to fostering, enabling, and enacting entrepreneurial activity and behaviours. These contexts shape everyday entrepreneurship experiences.

This book is based on the premise that how gender is articulated within the entrepreneurial debate has to acknowledge context. However, context is not a construct that only applies to those economies and situations that differ from the presumed norm of Western developed nations. Adopting a more critical appraisal of how context is positioned within current theorizing around gender and entrepreneurial behaviours offers potential to progress debate whilst acknowledging that competing and contrasting contextual influences require clearer recognition. This book, therefore, has the potential to unearth credible and robust approaches to further examining contextualisation and women entrepreneurship that advances new insights.

By exploring and examining how contextual influences shape women’s entrepreneurship, this book challenges the assumption that women entrepreneurship is the same throughout the world. It will be of value to researchers, academics, and students with an interest in entrepreneurship, political economy, economics, and public policy.

Maura McAdam is Professor of Management and Director of Entrepreneurship at Dublin City University, Ireland.

James A. Cunningham is Professor of Strategic Management and Director of Research and Innovation at the Department of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Strategy at Newcastle Business School at Northumbria University, UK.