Gender Equality and the Gender Gap in Entrepreneurship: A Cross-country Study

Which countries exhibit the largest gender disparities in entrepreneurship—and what is the role of gender equality in these disparities? We document that gender disparities are substantially more pronounced in entrepreneurship than in self-employment. This has important implications for the role of gender equality: it is positively associated with women's representation in entrepreneurship and negatively with women’s (over-)representation in self-employment. Unpacking gender equality, we further show that informal institutional de facto gender equality plays a larger role than formal institutional de jure gender equality. Our findings draw attention to the multifaceted nature of gender disparities in entrepreneurship and their institutional roots, which hold important implications for cross-national scholarship on gender disparities and entrepreneurship theory and policy.