Education and training benefiting a career as entrepreneur

TY - JOUR

T1 - Education and training benefiting a career as entrepreneur

T2 - Gender gaps and gendered competencies and benefits

AU - Cheraghi, Maryam

AU - Schøtt, Thomas

PY - 2015

Y1 - 2015

N2 - Purpose – Gender gaps pervade human activity. But little is known about forces reshaping gaps across career phases, from education to running a business. The purpose of this study is to account for gender gaps owing to a lack of education and training. Such gaps may accumulate over one’s entrepreneurial career and widen or narrow due both to environmental forces that reconfigure the gap across career phases and to the gendering of competencies and benefits from education and training.Methodology – A representative sample of 110,689 adults around the world was surveyed in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. Gender-related effects were ascertained by odds ratios estimated by hierarchical modelling, controlling for country and attributes of individuals.Findings – Education and entrepreneurial training, both during and after formal schooling, are highly beneficial in developing competencies and during career phases – i.e. intending to start a business, starting a business, and running a business. Early gaps in human capital are reproduced as gaps in careers, and continuous disadvantages in the environment repeatedly widen gaps throughout a person’s entrepreneurial career. That said, gender gaps are reduced slightly over time as women gain greater benefit from training than men. Implications for research – The cumulative effects of early gender gaps in education and training call for research on gendered learning, and recurrent gender effects across career phases call for research on gendering in micro-level contexts such as networks and macro-level contexts such as institutions.Implications for policy and education – Understanding the gendering of human capital and careers has implications for policy and education aimed at developing human resources, especially for mobilising women. The finding that women gain greater benefit than men from training is informative for policies that foster gender equality and empower women pursuing careers.Originality/value – Conceptualising the entrepreneurial career as a sequence of several stages enables the assessment of gender gaps owing to initial disadvantages in education and to recurrent disadvantages on the career path.

AB - Purpose – Gender gaps pervade human activity. But little is known about forces reshaping gaps across career phases, from education to running a business. The purpose of this study is to account for gender gaps owing to a lack of education and training. Such gaps may accumulate over one’s entrepreneurial career and widen or narrow due both to environmental forces that reconfigure the gap across career phases and to the gendering of competencies and benefits from education and training.Methodology – A representative sample of 110,689 adults around the world was surveyed in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. Gender-related effects were ascertained by odds ratios estimated by hierarchical modelling, controlling for country and attributes of individuals.Findings – Education and entrepreneurial training, both during and after formal schooling, are highly beneficial in developing competencies and during career phases – i.e. intending to start a business, starting a business, and running a business. Early gaps in human capital are reproduced as gaps in careers, and continuous disadvantages in the environment repeatedly widen gaps throughout a person’s entrepreneurial career. That said, gender gaps are reduced slightly over time as women gain greater benefit from training than men. Implications for research – The cumulative effects of early gender gaps in education and training call for research on gendered learning, and recurrent gender effects across career phases call for research on gendering in micro-level contexts such as networks and macro-level contexts such as institutions.Implications for policy and education – Understanding the gendering of human capital and careers has implications for policy and education aimed at developing human resources, especially for mobilising women. The finding that women gain greater benefit than men from training is informative for policies that foster gender equality and empower women pursuing careers.Originality/value – Conceptualising the entrepreneurial career as a sequence of several stages enables the assessment of gender gaps owing to initial disadvantages in education and to recurrent disadvantages on the career path.

U2 - 10.1108/IJGE-03-2013-0027

DO - 10.1108/IJGE-03-2013-0027

M3 - Journal article

VL - 7

SP - 321

EP - 343

JO - International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship

JF - International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship

SN - 1756-6266

IS - 3

ER -