Does entrepreneurship fit her? Women entrepreneurs, gender-role orientation, and entrepreneurial culture

Does entrepreneurship fit her? Women entrepreneurs, gender-role orientation, and entrepreneurial culture Francisco Liñán &Inmaculada Jaén & Domingo Martín Accepted: 30 September 2020 #The Author(s) 2020 Abstract The present research analyzes the way in which gender-role orientation (GRO) and perceived entrepreneurial culture affect the advancement of wom- en through the different stages in the entrepreneurial process. To do so, a sample of 1195 Spanish women is studied using Bem’s Sex Role Inventory to identify their GRO and a perceived regional culture (PRC) scale. The results confirm that women with a masculine or androgynous orientation are more likely to develop entrepreneurial careers. Besides, for masculine GRO women, the perception of a supportive entrepreneurial culture in their region fosters their advancement in entrepreneurship. In contrast, the effect of perceived culture is negative for women with an androgynous GRO. These results contribute to advance knowledge on the entrepreneurial process for women. Based on our results, the debate about women entrepreneurship should be expanded to fully acknowledge the relevance of GRO. Keywords Women entrepreneurship .Gender-role orientation .Perceived regional culture .Masculinity . Femininity .Androgyny JEL classifications J16 .L26 .D91 1Introduction “Context is important for understanding when, how, and why entrepreneurship happens and who becomes involved”(Welter 2011, p. 166). Context is a very wide concept and may encompass several levels and layers (Whetten 2009). In this sense, the institutional context includes economic, political, and cultural aspects (Shane 2003). In particular, culture has received considerable attention as very relevant in influencing entrepreneurship (Krueger et al. 2013). Culture has been found to affect both the formation of entrepreneurial intentions (Shinnar et al. 2012) and the emergence of entrepreneurial behavior (Hayton et al. 2002; Hayton and Cacciotti 2013;Thorntonetal.2011). It may influence the way entrepreneurs behave and the overall level and nature of entrepreneurial activity (Welter and Smallbone 2011). This effect takes place through its influence on actual rules and regulations, on social norms of behavior, and on the shared interpretation of reality (Scott 1995, 2010). A culture may be more or less supportive of entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial activity (Kibler etal. 2014). An entrepreneurially supportive culture is one in which the entrepreneurial activity is considered as https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-020-00433-w F. Liñán :I. Jaén :D. Martín Universidad de Sevilla, Seville, Spain I. Jaén e-mail: [email protected] D. Martín e-mail: [email protected] F. Liñán (*) Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK e-mail: [email protected] e-mail: [email protected] / Published online: 28 November 2020 Small Bus Econ (2022) 58:1051–1071 legitimate and desirable. Thus, it will lead to more individuals being involved in the entrepreneurial activity (Mueller and Thomas 2001). However, this positive effect of culture will not be equally strong on all members of society. A considerable amount of literature has focused on the existence of differences in entrepreneurial behavior between men and women (e.g., Gupta et al. 2008,2009,2013; Hechavarría et al. 2017;Marlowand McAdam 2013; Marlow and Swail 2014). It is frequently argued that women face cultural obstacles in pursuing an entrepreneurial career (Baughn et al. 2006; Bullough et al. 2017; Jennings and Brush 2013). Consequently, it is not at all surprising that research reports women’s level of entrepreneurial activity to be lower than that of men (Hindle et al. 2009; Hughes et al. 2012; Santos et al. 2016). Nevertheless, research on women’s entrepreneurship has argued that a direct comparison with that of men may not be appropriate (Ahl 2006;Marlowand McAdam 2013). Gender stereotypes are an important source of these differences between women’sandmen’s entrepreneurship. Gender stereotypes refer to the consensual beliefs shared by society about typical traits of women and men, and they have an effect on the professionalevaluationof people (Brovermanet al. 1972). The typical characteristics of women (feminine) are connected with their traditional role as homemakers, while those of men (masculine) are related to their traditional roles as providers (Eagly 1987). Entrepreneurs’activities have also been traditionally associated with masculine traits (de Pillis and Meilich 2006; Gupta et al. 2009; Laguía et al. 2018). This frequently leads to discrimination against women in entrepreneurship (Bigelow et al. 2014; Brush et al. 2018). Society and culture are seen as discriminating against women and making it more difficult for them to start a venture (Hirschi and Fischer 2013; Marlow and Swail 2014). Therefore, gender stereotypesnegativelyaffectwomen’sintentiontopursue an entrepreneurial career path (Gupta et al. 2008, 2009; Shinnar et al. 2012). Gender stereotypes may also explain why women report lower levels of the knowledge and skills required to start a new venture (Allen et al. 2007). In this sense, women often report a lowerabilityandarelesslikelytoactuallybecomeselfemployed(Verheuletal.2012).Genderstereotypesare also relevant at later stages (Gupta et al. 2019), when women entrepreneurs frequently receive less funding (Leitch et al. 2018; Brush et al. 2018) and face difficulties in developing their professional venture networks (Neumeyer et al. 2019). This approach, however, does not provide sufficient insight into the way women perceive reality and, in particular, the entrepreneurial career path. Nor does it clarify how women react to prevailing cultural norms. The extant literature is far from having fully explained the mechanisms through which an entrepreneurially supportive culture may encourage or discourage women from taking the entrepreneurial path. Research so far has analyzed the influence of culture on entrepreneurship by directly comparing—women vs. men (Shneor et al. 2013; Shinnar et al. 2012,2018). This would mean that all women are equally affected by this cultural influence. Yet in practice, some women do enter entrepreneurship and become successful entrepreneurs, which is at odds with the general and encompassing negative effect of culture on women’s entrepreneurship. Gender-role orientation (GRO) has been studied to explain different aspects of entrepreneurship, such as self-efficacy (Mueller and Conway Dato-on 2008)or entrepreneurial orientation (Goktan and Gupta 2015). Some researchers have used samples from different countries (Mueller and Conway Dato-on 2013;Goktan and Gupta 2015). However, as far as we are aware, no study has analyzed the joint influence of culture and GRO on entrepreneurship. Given the importance attached to context (and particularly culture) in shaping entrepreneurship behavior in general, and especially that of women, understanding the mechanisms through which this influence takes place is highly relevant. In this paper, we analyze how perceived culture affects women’s involvement in entrepreneurship (understoodas self-employment activity). We argue that the influence of the personal perception of culture on entrepreneurial aspirations and behavior is different depending on the individual’sGRO.Totestthisargument,we study a sample of adult women from Spain with different degrees of participation in entrepreneurial activity, ranging from no involvement at all in entrepreneurship to having several years of experience as business owners. The interaction between their perceptions about culture and their GRO is analyzed, and the results confirm their relevance. This research contributes to the literature on women’s entrepreneurship by focusing on the differential effect that perceptions about culture have on the level of entrepreneurial involvement depending on the participants’GRO. The results also contribute to the 1052 F. Liñán et al. “think entrepreneur, think male”research stream (de Pillis and Meilich 2006; Hancock et al. 2014; Laguía et al. 2018) by explaining how the cultural association between entrepreneurship and men has different encouraging/discouraging effects on women depending on their GRO. The next section presents the relevant theory and develops our research model and hypotheses. Section 3describes the methodology used in the empirical analysis, leading to the results in Section 4. These results are discussed in Section 5, and the paper ends with a brief conclusion. 2 Theory 2.1 Gender stereotypes and gender-role orientation The social stereotypes describing men and women are different in the large majority of countries (Wood and Eagly 2002). Women are typically described as caring, supportive, kind, or expressive, while men, in turn, are most commonly seen as independent, courageous, aggressive, or autonomous (Gupta et al. 2009). These stereotypical characteristics describe how men and women typically are (descriptive stereotypes) but also how they are expected to be (prescriptive stereotypes) (Shinnar et al. 2018). Both sides of the stereotype are substantially related, since the characteristics describing one sex are directly related to the behavior that is expected from individuals in that sex (Gupta et al. 2009). According to social role theory, the process of individual socialization encourages the acquisition of the traits and patterns of behavior connected with people’sgender stereotype (Eagly 1987). This process takes place with the facilitation of parents, schools, social media and the peer group. Gender-role orientation (GRO) is, therefore, a personal feature affecting one’s own attitudes, social behavior, and career choices consistent with socially construed stereotypes (Mueller and Conway Dato-on 2013). In this sense, men’s and women’s expected way of thinking and behaving is masculine or feminine, respectively (Mueller and Conway Dato-on 2013). However, according to some early but consolidated research (Constantinople 1973), the correspondence between biological sex and the GRO is not bi-univocal. Based on this view, Bem’s Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) was developed to measure masculinity and femininity as independent dimensions (Bem 1974). People scoring high in one dimension exhibit the stereotypical traits of that gender (masculine or feminine). In turn, a person scoring high in these two dimensions would jointly exhibit both types of traits (androgynous). Finally, a person scoring low in both would not adhere to the characteristics typical in either of them (undifferentiated). Therefore, women exhibiting the stereotypically feminine orientation (feminine women) represent just one of the four existing possibilities (Spence and Buckner 2000). Other women will have a masculine, an androgynous or an undifferentiated GRO. With regard to entrepreneurship, research has recently analyzed the relationship between GRO and entrepreneurial activity (Goktan and Gupta 2015; Gupta et al. 2009,2019; Hancock et al. 2014; Mueller and Conway Dato-On 2008,2013;Shneoretal.2013). According to this view, entrepreneurship is connected with the masculine stereotype and characterized by agentic features such as competitiveness and need for achievement or risk-taking (Gupta et al. 2009; Marlow and McAdam 2013;MarlowandSwail2014). Entrepreneurship has also been linked with ambition and self-confidence, which are related to the masculine stereotype as well (Hancock et al. 2014;Laguíaetal.2018). These agentic features of entrepreneurship are also close to those of the so-called traditional leadership style (Eagly and Carli 2003). Being assertive and competitive are two of the agentic qualities believed to be required to be a leader (Harrison et al. 2015). According to the “think manager, think male”paradigm, these characteristics are traditionally ascribed to men (Schein 2001). Similarly, entrepreneurs’activities have also been traditionally associated with masculine traits or to the directive leadership style (Laguía et al. 2018). In fact, entrepreneurship has been defended as the essence of leadership (Harrison et al. 2015). Entrepreneurship has also been connected with agentic features, such as risktaking (Caliendo et al. 2015; Verheul et al. 2012)and competitiveness (Bönte and Piegeler 2013). Some authors have proposed a “think entrepreneur, think male” paradigm to recognize this association (de Pillis and Meilich 2006; Laguía et al. 2018). As Harrison et al. (2015: 698) states, “…the language of masculinity, leadership, and entrepreneurship are so intertwined they have become synonymous”. GRO and sex are frequently equatedtoarguethatthe masculine stereotype in entrepreneurship produces a negative influence on women’s interest in entrepreneurship 1053Does entrepreneurship fit her? Women entrepreneurs, gender-role orientation, and entrepreneurial culture (Camelo-Ordaz et al. 2016). Women are said to perceive greater barriers to carry out entrepreneurial activities, such as in the access to financial resources (Brush et al. 2002) or lacking support or competency (Shinnar et al. 2012). Similarly, their traditional role as family carers may also represent a limitation (Díaz-García and Welter 2013). This would be leading a higher share of women to think that they do not possess the necessary skills and knowledge to be entrepreneurs (Allen et al. 2007; Laguía et al. 2018). However, this implies an oversimplification of gender stereotypes. Women—the same as men—may exhibit either feminine, masculine, androgynous, or undifferentiated GROs (Bem 1974; Constantinople 1973). In fact, Mueller and Conway Dato-on (2013) find that between 28 and 46% of women identify themselves with a feminine gender role. Meanwhile, Goktan and Gupta (2015) note 32% of women with a feminine role orientation. Therefore, the majority of women identifies themselves with alternative gender-role orientations. As a consequence, not all women are equally affected by the association between entrepreneurship and masculine stereotypes. As Gupta et al. (2009) argue, women who identify themselves with a masculine role orientation are more likely to exhibit entrepreneurial intentions and thus develop entrepreneurial careers. In turn, women with a feminine GRO will fall into the stereotypical category and will be less inclined toward entrepreneurship. Androgynous women exhibit both the traditional male and female characteristics. These women combine assertive and instrumental traits together with compassionate and expressive ones (Pérez-Quintana et al. 2017). Previous research has found androgyny to be associated with higher entrepreneurial self-efficacy (Mueller and Conway Dato-on 2008,2013). Similarly, this may be connected to more positive leadership skills (Harrison et al. 2015). The balance between feminine and masculine traits makes these individuals more flexible and adaptable to different situations, having a wider repertoire of skills to apply to each situation (Goktan and Gupta 2015). Previous research in the Spanish context has confirmed the applicability of GRO to the study of entrepreneurship. Hancock et al. (2014) analyzed the mental association in Spain between entrepreneurs and a series of traits that were typically masculine (considered as typical of men), feminine (typical of women), or androgynous (shared by both women and men). They found entrepreneurs to be described by masculine or androgynous traits only. Previous research in Spain has also found the masculine and androgynous GRO to be positively linked with entrepreneurial self-efficacy (Mueller and Conway Dato-On 2013) and with entrepreneurial intentions (Pérez-Quintana et al. 2017). For these reasons we hypothesize as follows: H1a. Women identifying with the masculine GRO will be more likely involved in entrepreneurship. H1b. Women identifying with the feminine GRO will be less likely involved in entrepreneurship. H1c. Women identifying with the androgynous GRO will be more likely involved in entrepreneurship 2.2 Culture and entrepreneurial behavior Culture can be defined as a set of shared beliefs, values, and expectations (Hayton et al. 2002). Hofstede (2003, p. 9) defines culture as “the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes members of one group or category of people from another”.It has been wellestablished that the cultural context influences the formation of entrepreneurial intentions (Shinnar et al. 2012; Siu and Lo 2013) and actual entrepreneurial behavior (Hayton et al. 2002; Stenholm et al. 2013; Thornton et al. 2011). Nevertheless, the focus of our analysis is on individual-level perceptions of culture, rather than aggregated country-level indicators. As entrepreneurship is an individual-level endeavor (Stephan and Uhlaner 2010), it is the personal perceptions about culture that are relevant for the individual to take entrepreneurial action (Autio et al. 2013; Liñán et al. 2016). Using individual-level perceptions of culture has been advocated (McCoy et al. 2005; Shinnar et al. 2012)because considerable heterogeneity exists in how culture is perceived among individuals within a single country (García-Cabrera and García-Soto 2008;JaénandLiñán 2013; Leung and Morris 2015). Country-level cultural indicators will hardly be able to predict whether and to what extent cultural aspects induce some individuals (but not others) to create a new venture. A culture is supportive of entrepreneurship if it stresses the values and behaviors connected with entrepreneurship (Mueller and Thomas 2001), thus legitimizing entrepreneurship through the development of institutions facilitating entrepreneurial activity (Thornton 1054 F. Liñán et al. et al. 2011). The theoretical roots of social legitimacy lie in institutional theory (Scott 1995,2010). This framework is suitable to assess the influence of cultural contexts on entrepreneurial activity (Kibler et al. 2014; Welter 2011). Institutions are social structures consisting of three institutional pillars, namely “cultural-cognitive, normative, and regulative elements that, together with associated activities and resources, provide stability and meaning to social life”(Scott 1995,p. 33). The cultural-cognitive pillar guides behavior through “deeply entrenched assumptions and conceptions of the ‘way the world is’” (Scott 2010, p. 7). The normative pillar exerts an influence on behavior through social norms of acceptability and morality, and the regulatory pillar acts through formal rules and related sanctions (Scott 2010). Therefore, the predominant culture shapes individual behavior by affecting individuals’ beliefs, their perception about the social rewards and sanctions expected after some action, or the rules that actually enable or constrain people’sbehavior (Scott 1995). Culture fosters the development of certain personality traits and motivates individuals to carry out particular behaviors that may not be obvious or desirable in other societies (Mueller and Conway Dato-on 2013). Legitimacy is thus understood as “a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper or appropriate”(Suchman 1995, p. 574). Individuals tend to behave in a way that is deemed to be socially appropriate and legitimate (Bourdieu 1991; Markus and Kitayama 1991). What constitutes socially legitimate behavior is, in turn, defined through social interactions with other individuals. Providing legitimacy to a certain type of behavior is crucially affected by culture-related aspects and the corresponding social sanctions in general (Kibler et al. 2014; Kibler and Kautonen 2016). Given that culture reinforces some characteristics while penalizing others, it is likely that some cultures may be more oriented toward entrepreneurship than is the case for others (Shneor et al. 2013). Applying these arguments to the entrepreneurship context implies that the cultural context affects whether firm creation actually occurs or not (Dodd and Anderson 2007; Steyaert 2007). Thus, a supportive culture will legitimize entrepreneurship as a valued activity and one that is approved of by the society (Etzioni 1987). Given intra-national variations in institutions (including culture), this legitimation process is probably more important at the regional level (Bosma and Schutjens 2011;Kibleretal.2014). Thus, the prevalence of sociocultural values affects regional levels of firm formation (Davidsson and Wiklund 1997). In particular, in the case of Spain, some previous research has found a relatively high variation between the predominant culture in each region (Jaén and Liñán 2013). For this reason, it seems even more appropriate in this context to focus on the perceptions of respondents about the predominant culture in their region of residence, rather than the Spanish national culture. Therefore, we hypothesize as follows: H2. Women considering their perceived regional culture to be more favorable to entrepreneurial activity will be more likely involved in entrepreneurship. 2.3 Gender-role orientation and perceived culture Not all cultures are equally supportive of entrepreneurship (Liñán and Fernandez-Serrano 2014). Certain cultures stressing a more masculine dimension (Hofstede 1998) are supposed to be more supportive of entrepreneurial activity (Shneor et al. 2013). In this sense, where the difference between the masculine and the feminine stereotypes is stronger, the social roles of men and wom- en tend to be more differentiated. That is, the cultural context affects the trade-off between a professional career and family interests (Hofstede 1998). It can then be argued that a culture is more supportive of entrepreneurship where the alignment between the “masculine”values linked with entrepreneurship and the national-culture value priorities is stronger (Mueller and Conway Dato-on 2013). Regarding entrepreneur-friendly values, an entrepreneurial culture would be connected with the cultural dimension of masculinity in Hofstede’s(2003)framework,orthatofmasteryinSchwartz’s(1999) framework. This will be related to the admissible career choices available to each person. That is, since entrepreneurship is associated with masculine characteristics (Ahl 2006; Gupta et al. 2009), cultures that are more supportive of entrepreneurship probably differentiate more strongly between the gender stereotypes linked with each professional career option (Laguía et al. 2018). In this sense, Shneor et al. (2013) found that in Norway (scoring low in both Hofstede’s masculinity dimension and Schwartz’s mastery dimension), the prototypical stereotype of an entrepreneur is less clearly connected with 1055Does entrepreneurship fit her? Women entrepreneurs, gender-role orientation, and entrepreneurial culture masculine traits than is the case for Turkey (scoring high in masculinity and mastery dimensions). In these more entrepreneurially supportive cultures, gender-role differentiation should be expected to be stronger (Mueller and Conway Dato-on 2013; Shneor et al. 2013). In the case of Spain, regional cultures differ notably. Some regional cultures are clearly considered as supportive of entrepreneurship, while the opposite is considered by others. For instance, Liñán et al. (2011) found the social valuation of entrepreneurship as a career option to be higher in Catalonia than was the case for Andalusia. Similarly, the GEM project defines the regional culture as the social and cultural norms supporting entrepreneurial activity (Reynolds et al. 2005;Reynoldsetal.2008). In the case of Spain, annual reports consistently find more entrepreneurially supportive social and cultural norms in Catalonia, Madrid, or the Basque Country, whereas they are perceived as less favorable in southern regions, such as Andalusia, Extremadura, or Murcia (Peña et al. 2019). Nevertheless, the entrepreneurial masculine stereotype seems to be present throughout the country (Laguía et al. 2018; Pérez- Quintana et al. 2017). Women will face tension between, on the one hand, the culturally assigned characteristics of entrepreneurial career paths and, on the other hand, the deviation these paths represent from the perceptions of proper feminine behavior, as dictated by cultural values and norms (Shneor et al. 2013). This tension, however, will depend on the extent to which people identify themselves with the masculine or feminine role orientations. Women identified with the feminine GRO will see themselves as being gentle, tender, affectionate, warm, or sensitive (Bem 1974). If they perceive that their culture is supportive of entrepreneurship (and thus emphasizes masculine-like traits and behaviors that are seen as alien to themselves), they will be less likely to get involved in entrepreneurship. That is, they perceive entrepreneurship as supported by society, but not suited for them. The opposite will happen for women identified with a masculine GRO. They will see themselves as assertive, determined, dominant, or a leader (Bem 1974). Given this self-image, the stronger they perceive culture to be supportive of entrepreneurship (stressing masculine-like traits and behaviors), the more likely it is that they will get involved in entrepreneurship. Androgynous women identify themselves with both feminine and masculine characteristics. In this case, they feel that they possess masculine-like traits and will therefore feel encouraged by a supportive culture to advance in entrepreneurship (Laguía et al. 2018). Besides, their wider repertoire of skills and learned behaviors (including feminine-like ones) will make them more confident to be able to adapt to the demands and changing requirements of entrepreneurship, given their higher flexibility (Mueller and Conway Dato-on 2013). Additionally, to the extent that entrepreneurship and leadership are closely related concepts (Harrison et al. 2015), the recent change in society toward a more balancedskill concept of leadership (Eagly and Carli 2003; Koenig et al. 2011) would also facilitate the entrepreneurial career of androgynous women. H3a. For women identifying with the masculine GRO, the relationship between the perceived supportiveness of regional culture and their involvement in entrepreneurship will be stronger. H3b. For women identifying with the feminine GRO, the relationship between the perceived supportiveness of regional culture and their involvement in entrepreneurship will be weaker. H3c. For women identifying with the androgynous GRO, the relationship between the perceived supportiveness of regional culture and their involvement in entrepreneurship will be stronger. 2.4 Research model and context characteristics Figure 1summarizes our research model and illustrates the hypotheses to be tested in the empirical analysis. But, of course, several other elements may affect the entrepreneurial decision of women in Spain. In this sense, we have argued that it is the individually perceived culture which is important to make individual decisions. However, several previous research works have used aggregate measures of culture or country proxies to control for culture (Goktan and Gupta 2015; Liñán and Fernandez-Serrano 2014; Mueller and Conway Dato-on 2013). In this case, the regional level measures of culture from the GEM Report Spain 2018 (Peña et al. 2019) are available. The global valuation of the entrepreneurial culture in Spain is 3.0 (in a scale from 1 to 5), which is higher than the 2.7 average for European innovation-driven countries (Peña et al. 2019). The entrepreneurial culture in the Spanish regions ranges from a minimum of 2.3 (Asturias) to a maximum of 3.4 (Catalonia). 1056 F. Liñán et al. The other most relevant set of variables known to affect entrepreneurship involvement is human capital. This includes both education and experience. Regarding the former, the specialized knowledge provided in higher education should facilitate entry into entrepreneurship, as indicated by the higher entrepreneurial activity of Spanish university graduates (Peña et al. 2019). In this sense, Noguera et al. (2015) argue that, in Spain, this is especially important for women, since it may serve to compensate for possible discrimination or other barriers. Similarly, specific entrepreneurship education is found to be positively related to entrepreneurial outcomes (Martin et al. 2013;Nabietal.2017;Nabietal.2018). In Spain, a considerable boost has been provided to entrepreneurship education in recent years, both from the public and the private sectors (Hernández-Sánchez et al. 2019). Recent data indicate that over 52% of entrepreneurs in Spain have received entrepreneurship education (Peña et al. 2019). On the other hand, previous labor experience (both as an entrepreneur and as an employee) is also considered as a positive influence on entrepreneurship (Bönte and Piegeler 2013;Kautonenetal.2015). In the case of Spain, previous research has found that work experience is positively related to entrepreneurial intentions (Liñán et al. 2011,2016). Finally, age is commonly included as a control variable, since research has regularly found it to be related to entrepreneurial activity (Kibler and Kautonen 2016; Verheul et al. 2012), as it facilitates the accumulation of both financial and human capital. In Spain, age is found to be only indirectly related to entrepreneurial intention (Liñán et al. 2011,2016), but entrepreneurial activity is highest in the 25- to 44-year- old age group (Peña et al. 2019). 3Methodology 3.1 Sample Thepopulationunderstudyismadeupofadultwomenin Spain presenting different levels of involvement in entrepreneurship (as defined in Section 3.2.1 below). The rates of involvement in entrepreneurship for men are relatively low in this country and even lower for women (Peña et al. 2019). Therefore, a purposeful sample was used. Data were collected between March and May 2018. On the one hand, a number of entrepreneurship support organizations were approached, and, through them, potential, nascent, and actual entrepreneurs were invited to participate. The organizations included four regional ones (Andalucia Emprende, Catalunya Empren, Bic Galicia, and Emprendelo [in Madrid]) and two national networks of centers (Chambers of Commerce and the Explorer program). Exact response rates cannot be produced because most centers have not informed of the number of invitations that they sent out. 1 In the case of Explorer, they sent invitations to over 1000 participants in their annual incubation program, and obtained 137 valid responses (a response rate of around 13%), 54 of them were women.Theseresponseratesareinlinewiththe9.4% reported by Deutskens et al. (2004) for a similarly structured online questionnaire. More recently, in a business context, Frese et al. (2019) obtained a 16.8% response rate with a shorter questionnaire. Overall, we collected 620 responses through entrepreneurship centers (271 of them were women). On the other hand, adults with a university education (alumni from a large university in the Andalusian region who have graduated in the last 5 years) were also approached and invited to participate. In this case, a total of 22,400 alumni were invited, and 1721 complete responses were returned (924 of them were women), representing a 7.7% response rate. This is in line with the 8.6% response rate reported by Breznitz and Zhang (2019) for a similar population of university alumni. The final sample used in this study is made up of 1195 women, who represent 51% of 2341 complete responses received. The distribution of both subsamples is presented in Table 1. Women in the sample were on average 29.3 years old, ranging from a minimum of 16 to a maximum of 65. Regarding education, 56.9% had a postgraduate degree (master or doctorate), while the remaining had a university degree (37.4%) or lower educational qualifications (5.7%). Additionally, 28.2% of the respondents had received specific entrepreneurship education to start a venture. The respondents tended to have employee experience (86.6%), with up to 38.3% of the sample having had more than 3 years of experience. In turn, only 24.9% of them had self-employment experience, and only 7.4% of the sample had more than 3 years of this experience. 1 Due to data protection regulations, the researchers did not have access to the personal information of the respondents. In turn, the centers forwarded our invitation message to their affiliates/users. 1057Does entrepreneurship fit her? Women entrepreneurs, gender-role orientation, and entrepreneurial culture The majority of the respondents lives in Andalusia (937 women, 78.5%), followed by Catalonia (73 wom- en, 6.1%), Madrid (57 cases, 4.8%), and Galicia (47 cases, 3.9%). The remaining regions together represent 6.8% of the sample (81 women). Respondents from Andalusia are especially frequent in the universityalumni subsample (86%), more so than is the case for the entrepreneurship-center subsample (50%). This difference will be controlled for in the statistical analysis (see below). As mentioned above, regional cultural differences are noteworthy between the Spanish regions. Andalusia presents a less favorable entrepreneurial culture (Peña et al. 2019) as well as a lower income level. Galicia is close to the Spanish average both regarding entrepreneurial culture and income. In contrast, Madrid and Catalonia are clearly above the average in both aspects. 3.2 Measures 3.2.1 Dependent variable The dependent variable “entrepreneurial involvement” measures the stage respondents are at in the entrepreneurial process. They answered the question: “What stage are you at in the creation process of your venture?”The available responses are: “I have not thought about it yet”(coded as 1 and meaning the individual is not involved in entrepreneurship), “I expect to create it in the next 3 years”(coded 2 and corresponding to the potential entrepreneur), “I am currently creating it”(3, meaning the person is a nascent entrepreneur), “I created it in the last 3 years”(4, for new entrepreneurs), and “I created it more than three years ago”(coded as 5 and representing consolidated entrepreneurs). Table 1presents the distribution of responses for this variable. This classification into stages (not involved, potential, nascent, new, and consolidated entrepreneurs) is frequently used in academic research (Álvarez et al. 2014; Caliendo et al. 2009; Reynolds et al. 2005). As may be seen, around half of the participants are not involved in entrepreneurship to any extent. Given that the great majority of the Spanish population is equally not involved (80.7%, according to the last GEM report) (Peña et al. 2019), the sample distribution is skewed toward this end to guarantee representativeness. On the other hand, as may be expected, the proportion of not-involved individuals is higher for the alumni subsample, whereas it is very low (only 4.8%) for the entrepreneurship-center subsample). These latter individuals are probably registered in the entrepreneurship center as participating in some training or similar activity and have received the invitation to participate in this study for this reason. 3.2.2 Independent variables Gender-role orientation (GRO) We employed a 12- item simplified version of Bem’s Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) scale to measure GRO (Bem 1974). The validity of this simplified version was confirmed for a Spanish sample (Mateo and Fernández 1991). The BSRI assumes a 2-factor structure representing the femininity and masculinity dimensions (Ahmed et al. 2016;Bem 1981). This structure has been satisfactorily confirmed by a number of recent studies (Ahmed et al. 2016; Carver et al. 2013). As done in similar previous research (Ahmed et al. 2016; Carver et al. 2013; Mateo and Fernández 1991), responses to the 12 items comprising the scale were factor-analyzed to compute the masculinity and femininity factors. The results from the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) were fully satisfactory and yielded two factors (masculinity and femininity), explaining 55.7% of the overall variance. They are included in the Appendix A1. According to Bem’s androgyny model (Bem 1974), the respondents were separated based on their gender Perceived re g ional culture Gender Role Orientation Involvement in Entre p reneurshi p H1a + H1b - H2 + H3b - H3a + H1c + H3c + Fig. 1 Research model and hypotheses 1058 F. Liñán et al. groups (Shifren and Bauserman 1996; Goktan and Gupta 2015). To do so, the median split method was used to classify the study population into four genderrole groups (Lenney 1991). This method is consistent with Mueller and Conway Dato-on (2013) and Goktan and Gupta (2015).Themedianmasculinityandfemininity scores for all respondents were .071 and .096, respectively. The women in our sample with both a masculinity score and a femininity score above their medians were categorized as androgynous (28.4%). The respondents with a masculinity score below 0.071 and a femininity score above 0.096 were categorized as feminine (24.6%). The respondents with a masculinity score above 0.071 and a femininity score below 0.096 were categorized as masculine (21.2%). The respondents with both a masculinity and a femininity score below their medians were categorized as undifferentiated (25.8%). Perceived regional culture (PRC) This variable was measured through a 5-item scale identifying cultural values that are positively related to entrepreneurship. The scale follows the National Expert Survey from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (Reynolds et al. 2005; Reynolds et al. 2008), which was originally developed based on McGrath and MacMillan (1992). The only difference is that the PRC refers to the “predominant culture in my region”,ratherthan“in my country”.The respondents were asked to rate the extent to which they perceived that the predominant culture in their region stresses each of the five values typically associated with entrepreneurship. The list of items is included in the Appendix A2. An EFA confirmed that they load in one single factor (see Appendix A2), explaining 69.46% of the overall variance. 3.2.3 Control variables According to the literature reviewed in Section 2.4 above, a number of variables were included as controls, since they are frequently found to affect entrepreneurial decisions. Age was measured in years. We have also controlled for the number of dependents (children, elderly or disabled) living with the respondents, as a potentially relevant personal circumstance. Three variables were used to control for experience and education. Firstly, the variable Master takes the value 1 for those women who presently have or are currently studying a Master or doctorate degree and 0 if this is not the case. Work experience is assessed through two variables. Employee experience indicates whether the respondent has previous work experience as an employee, while self-employment experience refers to experience as a self-employed person/entrepreneur. They are both devised as ordinal variables to consider the length of experience. They take the value 0 if the respondent has no experience, 1 if they have less than 1 year of experience, 2 for up to 3 years of experience, and value 3 when they have more than 3 years of experience. Entrepreneurship_training is a binary variable taking the value 1 for those women who have received specific training in entrepreneurship and 0 in the negative case. Role models (RM) are frequently cited as a reference and a source of vicarious learning (Bandura 1986). Table 1 Sample distribution Women sample 1 2 3 4 5 Total Have not thought about it Plan to do it in the next 3 years Presently starting aventure Venture started in the last 3 years Started more than 3 years ago Entrepreneurship centers - Andalusia -RestofSpain 13 (4.8%) 39% 61% 53 (19.6%) 37% 63% 64 (23.6%) 31% 69% 103 (38.0%) 57% 43% 38 (14.0%) 84% 16% 271 (100.0%) 50% 50% University alumni - Andalusia -RestofSpain 576 (62.3%) 88% 12% 227 (24.6%) 82% 18% 62 (6.7%) 87% 13% 47 (5.1%) 85% 15% 12 (1.3%) 92% 8% 924 (100.0%) 86% 14% Total - Andalusia -RestofSpain 589 (49.3%) 87% 13% 280 (23.4%) 75% 25% 126 (10.5%) 59% 41% 150 (12.6%) 67% 33% 50 (4.2%) 86% 14% 1195 (100.0%) 78% 22% 1059Does entrepreneurship fit her? Women entrepreneurs, gender-role orientation, and entrepreneurial culture Finally, our research has focused exclusively on wom- en. Nevertheless, previous research has confirmed that both men and women identify themselves with one of the four GROs (Gupta et al. 2009,2013; Mueller and Conway Dato-on 2008,2013). For this reason, we can expect to find internal differences in the entrepreneurial career of men based on their GRO. It would be most interesting to consider whether the traditional masculine stereotype of the entrepreneur prevalent in Spain is felt as an encouragement or discouragement by different GRO men, or rather men are unaffected by their perceptions of culture. 5.2 Limitations and future research lines This study, as any other, is not without limitations. In the first place, the sample comes from one single country (Spain). Since we are analyzing the influence of perceived culture, the characteristics of the shared national culture may exert an effect. To overcome this limitation, similar studies should be carried out in countries with diverse cultural features. In this way, the potential crosslevel influence could be taken into account. In particular, the majority of the sample comes from one single region (Andalusia), but the control variables included in the analyses should have compensated for this. 5 Secondly, our sample comes from two different subgroups of the population (entrepreneurship-center users and university alumni). This has been done to guarantee an adequate representativeness and variation in the sample. We have controlled for this with the E-center variable. The fact that it was significant means that there are differences in entrepreneurship involvement between the two groups. However, our results are meaningful after controlling for this variable, which adds robustness to our study. In the future, this research design could be replicated with different samples to test the extent to which they may be generalized, or to assess the influence of other potentially relevant elements. Thirdly, the data are cross-sectional, preventing us from being able to claim causality. Additionally, as discussed above, we cannot rule out the possibility of reversed causality (that advancement through the entrepreneurial process makes androgynous women have a less favorable perception of their regional culture). A longitudinal design (e.g., tracking these women to follow their changes throughout the entrepreneurial process) would be needed to confirm that GRO and PRC are truly causal in explaining entrepreneurship involvement. We plan to do so in the future. Our sample is large, and this should compensate for the usual attrition rates in longitudinal studies. Nevertheless, around half of our women are not engaged at all in entrepreneurship. Most of them will likely remain so in the future and will reduce our usable sample. 6 Conclusion This study is novel in that it assesses the joint influence of gender-role orientation and perceived supportiveness of culture in the advancement through the entrepreneurial career path. Unlike previous research focusing on personal perceptions (Goktan and Gupta 2015;Mueller and Conway Dato-on 2013), we analyze actual involvement in entrepreneurship. The results indicate that wom- en with a masculine orientation are more likely to develop entrepreneurial careers, and especially so when they perceive that the culture around them is pro-entre- preneurial. Androgynous women are also more likely to advance in the process in general. But, in sharp contrast, they are less likely to do so if they perceive that the culture is supportive of entrepreneurship. The present study, therefore, has shown that the debate about women’s entrepreneurship needs to be definitively expanded to fully acknowledge the relevance of genderrole orientations. In this sense, it contributes to the women’s entrepreneurship stream of research. Additionally, it provides evidence supporting the validity of the “think entrepreneur, think male”paradigm (de Pillis and Meilich 2006;Laguíaetal.2018). The study has focused only on women and, in so doing, has avoided the criticized bias in comparing men and women (Ahl 2006; Marlow and McAdam 2013). We have centered the analysis on the similarities and differences between alternative groups of women. This, we believe, holds promise of more enlightening results in the future, and therefore, we call for future research to persevere in this approach. Acknowledgments We are most grateful to the guest editors and the three anonymous reviewers for their most constructive comments and guidance during the whole review process. Funding This research is part of the ELITE Project (https:// www.researchgate.net/project/ELITE-Emergence-of-high-im- pact-entrepreneurs) and has benefitted from the funding from the Spanish National R+D Plan (Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad. Ref.: ECO2016-75655-P). 5 Additionally, we separately computed the research model for respondents in Andalusia and for those in the rest of the country, with the results being similar to those reported in this article. 1066 F. Liñán et al. Appendix A1. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) for Bem’s Sex-Role Inventory, short-version (12 items) The data structure is suitable for EFA, according to the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy (0.830) and Bartlett’s test of sphericity (Approx. Chisquared = 12,385.270, df = 66, Sig. = 0.000. Communalities range from a low of 0.369 (“makes decision easily”)to a high of 0.742 (“warm”). Two factors have eigenvalues greater than 1 and the cumulative variance explained is 55.7%. After rotation, the sums of squared loadings are 3.789 (component 1) and 3.500 (component 2). A2. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) for Perceived Regional Culture (PRC) The data structure is suitable for EFA, according to the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy (0.842) and Bartlett’s test of sphericity (Approx. Chisquared = 6670.879, df = 10, Sig. = 0.000. Communalities range from a low of 0.642 (“the predominant culture in my region…stimulates creativity and innovation”)to ahighof0.766(“…emphasizes self-sufficiency, autonomy and personal initiative”). One factor has an eigenvalue greater than 1 and the cumulative variance explained is 69.5%. The extraction sum of squared loadings is 3.473 for the single component. A3. Regression equations for each GRO category Since the four GRO categories are mutually exclusive, the respondents are necessarily in one –and only one- of them. Therefore, we can compute the effect of PRC on entrepreneurial involvement for each GRO category through the following equation: logΩmðÞ >m≤m j¼Control þαkþbkPRC−τm;k ¼UNDIF;MASC;FEMIN;ANDROG When all control variables are taken at their average, Eqs. 1to 4represent the relationship between PRC and entrepreneurial involvement for each GRO category: Undifferentiated : logΩmðÞ >m≤mj ¼Control þ0:000−0:157 PRC−τmð1Þ Masculine : logΩmðÞ >m≤mj ¼Control þ0:372 þ0:198 PRC−τmð2Þ Feminine : logΩmðÞ >m≤mj ¼Control þ0:071−0:057 PRC−τmð3Þ Androgynous : logΩmðÞ >m≤m j ¼Control þ0:404−0:233 PRC−τmð4Þ Where Control is the sum of each control variable taken as its average multiplied by its corresponding β Table 5 EFA pattern matrix for BSRI Component a 12 A1.Gentle .656 .105 A1.Sympathetic .655 .197 A1.Has leadership abilities .022 .846 A1.Acts like a leader −.027 .838 A1.Dominant −.192 .763 A1.Tender .829 −.167 A1.Warm .879 −.071 A1.Affectionate .864 −.069 A1.Strong personality .064 .621 A1.Defends own’s beliefs .205 .564 A1.Sensitive to others’needs .568 .174 A1.Makes decisions easily .064 .586 Note: The indicators loading more heavily in each component are marked in boldface Extraction method: principal component analysis. Rotation method: oblimin with Kaiser normalization a Rotation converged in 6 iterations Table 6 EFA component matrix for PRC The predominant culture in my region Component a 1 D6. …supports/values individual success obtained through personal effort .830 D6. …emphasizes self-sufficiency, autonomy and personal initiative .875 D6. …stimulates the assumption of business risk .827 D6. …stimulates creativity and innovation .801 D6. …emphasizes that the individual is responsible for managing their life .833 Extraction method: principal component analysis a 1 components extracted 1067Does entrepreneurship fit her? Women entrepreneurs, gender-role orientation, and entrepreneurial culture coefficient. The independent term (a k ) is the direct effect of each particular GRO, taken directly from the OLM regression results in Model 2 (it is 0 for undifferentiated GRO women, since this is taken as the reference category). The PRC coefficient (b k ) is the effect of perceived regional culture for each GRO (it is the sum, for each category, of the PRC coefficient β PRC and the interaction β GRO-PRC , both taken from Model 2). The standard deviations and significance levels for the coefficients in Eqs. 1–4are presented in Table 7. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. References Ahl, H. (2006). Why research on women entrepreneurs needs new directions. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 30(5), 595–621. Ahmed, T., Vafaei, A., Belanger, E., Phillips, S. P., & Zunzunegui, M. V. (2016). Bem sex role inventory validation in the international mobility in aging study. Canadian Journal on Aging/La revue canadienne du vieillissement, 35(3), 348–360. Allen, E., Langowitz, N., & Minniti, M. (2007). The 2006 global entrepreneurship monitor special topic report: Omen in entrepreneurship. Babson Park: Center for Women Leadership, Babson College. Álvarez, C., Urbano, D., & Amorós, J. E. (2014). GEM research: achievements and challenges. Small Business Economics, 42(3), 445–465. Autio, E., Pathak, S., & Wennberg, K. (2013). Consequences of cultural practices for entrepreneurial behaviors. Journal of International Business Studies, 44(4), 334–362. Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. Baughn, C. C., Chua, B. L., & Neupert, K. E. (2006). The normative context for women’s participation in entrepreneruship: a multicountry study. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 30(5), 687–708. Bem, S. L. (1974). The measurement of psychological androgyny. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 42(2), 155– 162. Bem, S. L. (1981). Bem sex-role inventory: Professional manual. Palo Alto: Consulting Psychologists Press. Bigelow, L., Lundmark, L., McLean Parks, J., & Wuebker, R. (2014). Skirting the issues: experimental evidence of gender bias in IPO prospectus evaluations. Journal of Management, 40(6), 1732–1759. Bönte, W., & Piegeler, M. (2013). Gender gap in latent and nascent entrepreneurship: driven by competitiveness. Small Business Economics, 41(4), 961–987. Bosma, N., & Schutjens, V. (2011). Understanding regional variation in entrepreneurial activity and entrepreneurial attitude in Europe. The Annals of Regional Science, 47(3), 711–742. Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. Cambridge: Polity Press. Breznitz, S. M., & Zhang, Q. (2019). Determinants of graduates’ entrepreneurial activity. Small Business Economics,1–18. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-019-00171-8. Broverman, I. K., Vogel, S. R., Broverman, D. M., Clarkson, F. E., & Rosenkrantz, P. S. (1972). Sex-role stereotypes: a current appraisal. Journal of Social Issues, 28(2), 59–78. Brush, C. G., Carter, N. M., Greene, P. G., Hart, M. M., & Gatewood, E. (2002). The role of social capital and gender in linking financial suppliers and entrepreneurial firms: a framework for future research. Venture Capital: An International Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance, 4(4), 305–323. Brush, C.G., Greene, P., Balachandra, L., & Davis, A. (2018). The gender gap in venture capitalprogress, problems, and perspectives. Venture Capital, 20(2), 115–136. Bullough, A., Renko, M., & Abdelzaher, D. (2017). Women’s business ownership: operating within the context of institutional and in-group collectivism. Journal of Management, 43(7), 2037–2064. Caliendo, M., Fossen, F. M., & Kritikos, A. S. (2009). Risk attitudes of nascent entrepreneurs-new evidence from an Table 7 PRC effect on the ordered log-odds (logits) for each GRO taking all others as the reference Gender-role orientation α k b k Coeff. SE pvalue Coeff. SE pvalue Undifferentiated 0 −0.1573 (0.1240) 0.205 Masculine 0.3720** (0.1732) 0.032 0.1979 (0.1246) 0.112 Feminine 0.0715 (0.1701) 0.674 −0.0570 (0.1350) 0.673 Androgynous 0.4037** (0.1618) 0.013 −0.2334** (0.1020) 0.022 SE standard errors. Significance levels: ***p<0.01,**p<0.05,*p<0.1 1068 F. Liñán et al. experimentally validated survey. Small Business Economics, 32(2), 153–167. Caliendo, M., Fossen, F. M., Kritikos, A., & Wetter, M. (2015). The gender gap in entrepreneurship: not just a matter of personality. CESifo Economic Studies, 61(1), 202–238. Camelo-Ordaz, C., Diánez-González, J. P., & Ruiz-Navarro, J. (2016). The influence of gender on entrepreneurial intention: the mediating role of perceptual factors. BRQ Business Research Quarterly, 19(4), 261–277. Carver, L. F., Vafaei, A., Guerra, R., Freire, A., & Phillips, S. P. (2013). Gender differences: Examination of the 12-item Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI-12) in an older Brazilian population. PloS one, 8(10), e76356. Constantinople, A. (1973). Masculinity-femininity: an exception to the famous dictum? Psychological Bulletin, 80,389–407. Davidsson, P., & Wiklund, J. (1997). Values, beliefs and regional variations in new firm formation rates. Journal of Economic Psychology, 18(2–3), 179–199. de Pillis, E., & Meilich, O. (2006). Think entrepreneur, think male? Business students’assumptions about a hypothetical entrepreneur. International Journal of Entrepreneurship Education, 4,3–18. Deutskens, E., De Ruyter, K., Wetzels, M., & Oosterveld, P. (2004). Response rate and response quality of internetbased surveys: an experimental study. Marketing Letters, 15(1), 21–36. Díaz-García, M. C., & Welter, F. (2013). Gender identities and practices: interpreting women entrepreneurs’narratives. International Small Business Journal, 31(4), 384–404. Dodd, S. D., & Anderson, A. R. (2007). Mumpsimus and the mything of the individualistic entrepreneur. International Small Business Journal, 25(4), 341–360. Down, S., & Reveley, J. (2004). Generational encounters and the social formation of entrepreneurial identity:‘young guns’and ‘old farts’.Organization, 11(2), 233–250. Durlak, J. A. (2009). How to select, calculate, and interpret effect sizes. Journal of Pediatric Psychology, 34(9), 917–928. Eagly, A. H. (1987). Reporting sex differences. American Psychologist, 42(7), 756–757. Eagly, A. H., & Carli, L. L. (2003). The female leadership advantage: an evaluation of the evidence. The Leadership Quarterly, 14(6), 807–834. Etzioni, A. (1987). Entrepreneurship, adaptation and legitimation: a macro-behavioral perspective. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 8(2), 175–189. Frese, T., Geiger, I., & Dost, F. (2019). An empirical investigation of determinants of effectual and causal decision logics in online and high-tech start-up firms. Small Business Economics,1–24. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-019- 00147-8. García-Cabrera, A. M., & García-Soto, M. G. (2008). Cultural differences and entrepreneurial behaviour: an intra-country cross-cultural analysis in Cape Verde. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 20(5), 451–483. Goktan, A. B., & Gupta, V. K. (2015). Sex, gender, and individual entrepreneurial orientation: evidence from four countries. International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, 11(1), 95–112. Gupta, V. K., Turban,D. B., & Bhawe, N. M. (2008).The effect of gender stereotype activation on entrepreneurial intentions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(5), 1053–1061. Gupta, V. K., Turban, D. B., Wasti, S. A., & Sikdar, A. (2009). The role of gender stereotypes in perceptions of entrepreneurs and intentions to become an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 33(2), 397–417. Gupta, V. K., Turban, D. B., & Pareek, A. (2013). Differences between men and women in opportunity evaluation as a function of gender stereotypes and stereotype activation. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 37(4), 771–788. Gupta, V. K., Wieland, A. M., & Turban, D. B. (2019). Gender characterizations in entrepreneurship: a multi-level investigation of sex-role stereotypes about high-growth, commercial, and social entrepreneurs. Journal of Small Business Management, 57(1), 131–153. Hancock, C., Pérez-Quintana, A., & Hormiga, E. (2014). Stereotypical notions of the entrepreneur: an analysis from a perspective of gender. Journal of Promotion Management, 20(1), 82–94. Harrison, R., Leitch, C., & McAdam, M. (2015). Breaking glass: toward a gendered analysis of entrepreneurial leadership. Journal of Small Business Management, 53(3), 693–713. Hayton, J. C., & Cacciotti, G. (2013). Is there an entrepreneurial culture? A review of empirical research. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 25(9–10), 708–731. Hayton, J. C., George, G., & Zahra, S. A. (2002). National culture and entrepreneurship: a review of behavioral research. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 26(4), 33–52. Hechavarría, D. M., Terjesen, S. A., Ingram, A. E., Renko, M., Justo, R., & Elam, A. (2017). Taking care of business: the impact of culture and gender on entrepreneurs’blended value creation goals. Small Business Economics, 48(1), 225–257. Henry, C., Foss, L., & Ahl, H. (2016). Gender and entrepreneurship research: a review of methodological approaches. International Small Business Journal, 34(3), 217–241. Hernández-Sánchez, B. R., Sánchez-García, J. C., & Mayens, A. W. (2019). Impact of entrepreneurial education programs on total entrepreneurial activity: the case of Spain. Administrative Sciences, 9(1), 25. Hindle, K., Klyver, K., & Jennings, D. F. (2009). An “informed” intent model: Incorporating human capital, social capital, and gender variables into the theoretical model of entrepreneurial intentions. In A. Carsrud & M. Brännback (Eds.), Understanding the entrepreneurial mind: Opening the black box (pp. 35–50). New York: Springer. Hirschi, A., & Fischer, S. (2013). Work values as predictors of entrepreneurial career intentions: a longitudinal analysis of gender effects. Career Development International, 18(3), 216–231. Hofstede, G. (1998). The cultural construction of gender. In G. Hofstede (Ed.), Masculinity and femininity: The taboo dimension of national cultures. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications Inc.. Hofstede, G. (2003). Culture’s consequences: Comparing values, behaviors, institutions and organizations across nations (2nd ed.). Newbury Park: Sage Publications. Hughes, K. D., Jennings, J. E., Brush, C. G., Carter, S., & Welter, F. (2012). Extending women’s entrepreneurship research in new directions. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 36(3), 429–442. 1069Does entrepreneurship fit her? Women entrepreneurs, gender-role orientation, and entrepreneurial culture Jaén, I., & Liñán, F. (2013). Work values in a changing economic environment: the role ofentrepreneurial capital. International JournalofManpower,34(8), 939–960. Jennings, J. E., & Brush, C. G. (2013). Research on women entrepreneurs: challenges to (and from) the broader entrepreneurship literature? Academy of Management Annals, 7(1), 663–715. Kautonen, T., van Gelderen, M., & Fink, M. (2015). Robustness of the theory of planned behavior in predicting entrepreneurial intentions and actions. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 39(3), 655–674. Kibler, E., & Kautonen, T. (2016). The moral legitimacy of entrepreneurs: an analysis of early-stage entrepreneurship across 26 countries. International Small Business Journal, 34(1), 34–50. Kibler, E., Kautonen, T., & Fink, M. (2014). Regional social legitimacy of entrepreneurship: implications for entrepreneurial intention and start-up behaviour. Regional Studies, 48(6), 995–1015. Koenig, A. M., Eagly, A. H., Mitchell, A. A., & Ristikari, T. (2011). Are leader stereotypes masculine? A meta-analysis of three research paradigms. Psychological Bulletin, 137(4), 616. Krueger, N. F., Liñán, F., & Nabi, G. (2013). Cultural values and entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 25(9–10), 703–707. Laguía, A., García-Ael, C., Wach, D., & Moriano, J. A. (2018). “Think entrepreneur-think male”: A task and relationship scale to measure gender stereotypes in entrepreneurship. International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, (online first). Leitch, C., Welter, F., & Henry, C. (2018). Women entrepreneurs’ financing revisited: taking stock and looking forward. Venture Capital, 20(2), 103–114. Lenney, E. (1991). Sex role. The measurement of masculinity, femininity and androgyny. In L. S. Robinson & Wrightsman (Eds.), Measures of personality and social psychological attitudes (Vol. 1, pp. 573–660). San Diego: Academic Press. Leung, K., & Morris, M. W. (2015). Values, schemas, and norms in the culture-behavior nexus: a situated dynamics framework. Journal of International Business Studies, 46(9), 1028–1050. Liñán, F., & Fernandez-Serrano, J. (2014). National culture, entrepreneurship and economic development: different patterns across the European Union. Small Business Economics, 42(4), 685–701. Liñán, F., Urbano, D., & Guerrero, M. (2011). Regional variations in entrepreneurial cognitions: start-up intentions of university students in Spain. Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 23(3–4), 187–215. Liñán, F., Moriano, J. A., & Jaén, I. (2016). Individualism and entrepreneurship: does the pattern depend on the social context? International Small Business Journal, 34(6), 760–776. Lounsbury, M., & Glynn, M. A. (2001). Cultural entrepreneurship: stories, legitimacy, and the acquisition of resources. Strategic Management Journal, 22(6–7), 545–564. Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: implications for cognition, emotion and motivation. Psychological Review, 98,224–253. Marlow,S., & McAdam, M. (2013). Gender and entrepreneurship: advancing debate and challenging myths; exploring the mystery of the under-performing female entrepreneur. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, 19(1), 114–124. Marlow, S., & Swail, J. (2014). Gender, risk and finance: why can’t a woman be more like a man? Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 26(1–2), 80–96. Martin, B. C., McNally, J. J., & Kay, M. J. (2013). Examining the formation of human capital in entrepreneurship: a metaanalysis of entrepreneurship education outcomes. Journal of Business Venturing, 28(2), 211–224. Mateo, M., & Fernández, J. (1991). La dimensionalidad de los conceptos de masculinidad y feminidad. Investigaciones Psicológicas, 9,95–116. McCoy, S., Galletta, D. F., & King, W. R. (2005). Integrating national culture into IS research: the need for current individual level measures. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 15,211–224. McGrath, R. G., & MacMillan, I. C. (1992). More like each other than anyone else - a cross-cultural study of entrepreneurial perceptions. Journal of Business Venturing, 7(5), 419–429. Mueller, S. L., & Conway Dato-On, M. (2008). Gender-role orientation as a determinant of entrepreneurial self-efficacy. Journal of Developmental Entrepreneurship, 13(1), 3–20. Mueller, S. L., & Conway Dato-On, M. (2013). A cross cultural study of gender-role orientation and entrepreneurial self-effi- cacy. International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, 9(1), 1–20. Mueller, S. L., & Thomas, A. S. (2001). Culture and entrepreneurial potential: a nine country study of locus of control and innovativeness. JournalofBusinessVenturing,16(1), 51–75. Nabi, G., Liñán, F., Fayolle, A., Krueger, N., & Walmsley, A. (2017). The impact of entrepreneurship education in higher education: a systematic review and research agenda. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 16(2), 277–299. Nabi, G., Walmsley, A., Liñán,F., Akhtar, I.,& Neame, C. (2018). Does entrepreneurship education in the first year of higher education develop entrepreneurial intentions? The role of learning and inspiration. Studies in Higher Education, 43(3), 452–467. Neumeyer, X., Santos, S. C., Caetano, A., & Kalbfleisch, P. (2019). Entrepreneurship ecosystems and women entrepreneurs: a social capital and network approach. Small Business Economics, 53(2), 475–489. Noguera, M., Alvarez, C., Merigo, J. M., & Urbano, D. (2015). Determinants of female entrepreneurship in Spain: an institutional approach. Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, 21(4), 341–355. Peña, I., Guerrero, M., González-Pernía, J. L., & Montero, J. (2019). Global entrepreneurship monitor: Informe GEM España 2018–2019. Santander: Ed. Universidad de Cantabria & Asociación Red GEM España. Perez-Quintana, A., Hormiga, E., Martori, J. C., & Madariaga, R. (2017). The influence of sex and gender-role orientation in the decision to become an entrepreneur. International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship, 9(1), 8–30. Reynolds, P. D., Bosma, N., Autio, E., Hunt, S., De Bono, N., Servais, I., et al. (2005). Global entrepreneurship monitor: data collection design and implementation 1998–2003. Small Business Economics, 24(3), 205–231. 1070 F. Liñán et al. Reynolds, P. D., Autio, E., & Hechavarria, D. M. (2008). Global entrepreneurship monitor (GEM): Expert questionnaire data. Ann Arbor: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. Santos, F. J., Roomi, M. A., & Liñán, F. (2016). About gender differences and the social environment in the development of entrepreneurial intentions. Journal of Small Business Management, 54(1), 49–66. Schein, V. E. (2001). A global look at psychological barriers to women’s progress in management. Journal of Social Issues, 57,675–688. Scherer, R. F., Brodzinsky, J. D., & Wiebe, F. A. (1991). Examining the relationship between personality and entrepreneurial career preference. Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 3,195–206. Schwartz, S. H. (1999). A theory of cultural values and some implications for work. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 48(1), 23–47. Scott, W. R. (1995). Institutions and organizations. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications Inc.. Scott, W. R. (2010). Reflections: The past and future of research on institutions and institutional change. JournalofChange Management, 10(1), 5–21. Shane, S. A. (2003). A general theory of entrepreneurship: The individual-opportunity nexus. New horizons in entrepreneurship series. Cheltenham: E. Elgar. Shifren, K., & Bauserman, R. (1996). The relationship between instrumental and expressive traits, health behaviors, and perceived physical health. Sex Roles, 34(11–12), 841–864. Shinnar, R. S., Giacomin, O., & Janssen, F. (2012). Entrepreneurial perceptions and intentions: the role of gender and culture. Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice, 36(3), 465–493. Shinnar, R. S., Hsu, D. K., Powell, B. C., & Zhou, H. (2018). Entrepreneurial intentions and start-ups: are women or men more likely to enact their intentions? International Small Business Journal, 36(1), 60–80. Shneor, R., Metin Camgöz, S., & Bayhan Karapinar, P. (2013). The interaction between culture and sex in the formation of entrepreneurial intentions. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 25(9–10), 781–803. Siu, W.-S. S., & Lo, E. S.-C. (2013). Cultural contingency in the cognitive model of entrepreneurial intention. Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice, 37(2), 147–173. Spence, J. T., & Buckner, C. E. (2000). Instrumental and expressive traits, trait stereotypes, and sexist attitudes: what do they signify? Psychology of Women Quarterly, 24(1), 44–62. Stenholm, P., Acs, Z. J., & Wuebker, R. (2013). Exploring country-level institutional arrangements on the rate and type of entrepreneurial activity. Journal of Business Venturing, 28(1), 176–193. Stephan, U., & Uhlaner, L. M. (2010). Performance-based vs socially supportive culture: a cross-national study of descriptive norms and entrepreneurship. Journal of International Business Studies, 41(8), 1347–1364. Steyaert, C. (2007). “Entrepreneuring”asa conceptual attractor? A review of process theories in 20 years of entrepreneurship studies. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 19(6), 453–477. Suchman, M. C. (1995). Managing legitimacy: strategic and institutional approaches. Academy of Management Review, 20(3), 571–610. Thornton,P. H., Ribeiro-Soriano, D., & Urbano, D. (2011). Sociocultural factors and entrepreneurial activity. International Small Business Journal, 29(2), 105–118. Verheul, I., Thurik, R., Grilo, I., & Van der Zwan, P. (2012). Explaining preferences and actual involvement in self-em- ployment: gender and the entrepreneurial personality. Journal of Economic Psychology, 33(2), 325–341. Welter, F. (2011). Contextualizing entrepreneurship - conceptual challenges and ways forward. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 35(1), 165–184. Welter, F., & Smallbone, D. (2011). Institutional perspectives on entrepreneurial behavior in challenging environments. Journal of Small Business Management, 49(1), 107–125. Whetten, D. A. (2009). An examination of the interface between context and theory applied to the study of Chinese organizations. Management and Organization Review, 5(1), 29– 56. Wood, W., & Eagly, A. H. (2002). A cross-cultural analysis of the behavior of women and men: implications for the origins of sex differences. Psychological Bulletin, 128(5), 699–727. Publisher’snote Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. 1071Does entrepreneurship fit her? Women entrepreneurs, gender-role orientation, and entrepreneurial culture