Despite significant strides toward gender equality, women around the world continue to encounter systemic obstacles that hinder their entrepreneurial success. This paper systematically reviews the literature on the barriers female entrepreneurs face and the solutions proposed to overcome these...

The rapid growth of the gig economy is reshaping traditional employment structures, creating new pathways for entrepreneurial activities, especially for women. Female entrepreneurship has always been a trending issue worldwide, particularly in developing conservative societies where females face...

Entrepreneurship aims to contribute significantly to economic development, a trend that has been progressively growing over time. Nonetheless, female entrepreneurs continue to face substantial challenges, including limited access to financial resources and sociocultural barriers. The influence...

We study how faculty promotion decisions shape women's careers and the academic pipeline, using data from 4,000 Spanish university departments across all disciplines. We identify exogenous variation in promotions using the random assignment of evaluators to promotion committees between 2002 and...

We study the role of mayoral gender in attracting public funding in Italian municipalities. We exploit a novel administrative dataset containing detailed information on all projects aimed at the digitalisation of local public administrations and funded under Italy's National Recovery and...

This study investigates the configurational pathways enabling women in Oman to translate entrepreneurial intentions into technology venture creation. By integrating institutional theory and resource‑based view, we develop a novel framework examining how formal institutional support (FIS),...

This article explores how female entrepreneurs construct and negotiate entrepreneurial identities across socialist, transition, and post-socialist periods in Slovenia. Drawing on feminist, post-structuralist, and identity-theory perspectives, we ask what determines women's entrepreneurial...

The proportion of women on the executive and supervisory boards of Germany's largest private companies has risen considerably since data collection for the DIW Women Executives Barometer began 20 years ago. While it was just over one percent on the executive boards of Germany's 200...

We study the role of mayoral gender in attracting public funding in Italian municipalities. We exploit a novel administrative dataset containing detailed information on all projects aimed at the digitalisation of local public administrations and funded under Italy's National Recovery and...

In developing economies, women entrepreneurs play a vital role in advancing inclusive growth, yet their financial and digital capabilities often remain constrained by gendered barriers. This study investigates how financial literacy evolves into a gender-sensitive capability that drives digital...

Gender quotas remain controversial despite evidence of their effectiveness in reducing labor-market gender inequality. We study how informational narratives about quotas affect support, and how effects depend on pre-existing causal beliefs about inequality. In a pre-registered survey experiment...

Does group gender diversity benefit individuals? I examine this question with a field experiment randomizing 3,060 students to small study groups at university entry. Assignment to mixed-gender rather than single-gender groups improves performance and well-being for both men and women:...

This Brief explores how childcare responsibilities shape women’s entrepreneurial choices and business growth, drawing on data from the Women, Business and the Law project as well as complementary evidence from Bangladesh, Brazil, and Nigeria. Globally, women spend nearly three times as much...

Can college-educated women in rapidly developing economies balance career and family, or does compressed economic growth polarize their choices? This paper investigates how Indonesian women navigate these dual objectives across birth cohorts from the 1950s to the 1990s. It utilizes 38 years of...

The paper aims to provide spatial evidence on where to prioritize place-based support for women's entrepreneurship by linking the geography of female founders to the proximity of formal support infrastructure in Germany. To pursue this objective, we assemble nationwide venture microdata covering...

Women are essential to the growth of any progressive society. Equal access to employment is necessary for both women's empowerment and global economic growth. However, discrimination against women persists at all career levels, making it challenging for them to overcome barriers to leadership...

Engineering remains a highly gendered and racialised profession in South Africa, shaped by enduring historical inequalities and the imprint of institutionalised exclusion that structures women's experiences of belonging and professional legitimacy. While women's underrepresentation in STEM is...

Despite several policies and legislation enactments to address gender inequality in the post-apartheid South African employment landscape, a significant proportion of female academics still face marginalization and underrepresentation in senior executive positions. This paper aims to investigate...

Concerns about corporate scandals and abusive leadership suggest that individuals with an opportunistic and manipulative personality sort into managerial positions. Indeed, a fledgling number of econometric studies have shown that individuals high in Machiavellianism are more likely to hold a...

This important book in the EFMD series shines a light on women (and sometimes the absence of them) within business schools, as well as their contributions and impact across multiple spheres within and beyond their schools. Despite the clear rationale for promoting sustainable gender equity, the...

In the annual DIW Women Executives Barometer, we document the share of women on the executive and supervisory boards of the largest companies in Germany. We separately analyse different groups of companies, among which there are the 200 companies with the highest turnover in Germany outside the...

This study examines the impact of board gender diversity (BGD) on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance, with a focus on the moderating roles of financial performance (Return on Assets), board meeting frequency (BMF), and foreign board members (FBM). Panel regression analysis...

This study investigates the process of selecting the inaugural chief executive officer (CEO) in nascent social ventures, emphasizing the unique qualities required due to these ventures' dual social and economic objectives.This study integrates human capital theory and gender expectancy violation...

Women remain underrepresented in leadership worldwide. Across politics, business, and community organizations, they face barriers limiting access to leadership roles and influence in decision-making. This paper groups these barriers into opportunity, motivation, and capability, and reviews...

Is female leadership greener? This study explores how female leadership influences environmental innovation in the energy sector, which is crucial for addressing sustainability challenges related to GHG emissions. Building on upper echelons theory, gender socialization, and contingency theories,...

Women entrepreneurs in rural South Africa face structural and socio-cultural barriers in accessing funding. This study investigated how existing financial structures and support programs influence the sustainability and growth of female-owned businesses in rural areas. Using bibliometric...

Women are often portrayed in climate discourse as disproportionately vulnerable to environmental change-a reductive framing that, while grounded in evidence, can obscure their agency and leadership in shaping climate resilience. This paper addresses that gap by exploring how gendered experience...

This paper presents a systematic review of the literature that evaluates the causal impact of interventions designed to enhance women's access to productive capital in low- and middle- income economies. The review identifies 27 studies that meet certain criteria, with wide geographic coverage....

Grounded in stakeholder and social categorisation theories, this study addresses the limited European evidence regarding how board composition and functioning drive corporate equality-a multidimensional construct encompassing diversity, inclusion and people development. We examined the effects...