Elizabeth Gatewood

Women entrepreneurs who break through to equity financing: The influence of human, social and financial capital

This is one of the first efforts to systematically study attributes of women business owners and their equity financing strategies. The study explored the factors associated with the use of equity capital in women led firms. Hypotheses examined the influence of human and social capital on the likelihood of seeking equity funding, access to funding sources, bootstrapping techniques and development of financial strategies. Data for this study came from a survey of 235 US women business owners conducted by the National Foundation for Women Business Owners from a sample identified by Dun and Bradstreet. Results showed only graduate education significantly influenced the odds of using outside equity financing. Social capital had no direct effect on increasing likelihood of using equity but influenced the use of bootstrapping techniques. Network diversity was positively related to the use of personal sources of funding, while professional advisor relationships were negatively related to personal sources of financing. Our research suggests women obtaining higher levels of education may increase their likelihood of obtaining funding. Further, during the bootstrap phase, utilizing social capital is an asset.

The role of social capital and gender in linking financial suppliers and entrepreneurial firms: A framework for future research

Equity capital fuels growth companies and yields high returns for investors. The process of equity investment and ultimate harvesting of innovative companies has created significant wealth among fund investors, venture capitalists, angels and new entrepreneurs. Extensive research investigates all phases of the venture capital investment process, industry characteristics and returns to investors. Surprisingly absent from current research are studies including women, on both the supply (equity provider) and demand (equity seeker) sides. Women make significant contributions to the US economy in the workforce and as business owners, yet research about women as recipients of equity capital and providers of equity is extremely scarce. This raises a question--are women being left out of the wealth creation process? Our paper addresses this question by exploring womens role in supply and demand of equity capital. We utilize a social capital perspective to develop a conceptual framework and focus our analysis on early stage and angel investment. The paper concludes with directions for future research.

A Note on the Efficiency and Effectiveness of Outsider Assistance Programs in Rural Versus Non-Rural States

Although numerous countries have developed policies and programs to encourage entrepreneurial behavior in rural areas, there have been few attempts to compare the performance of entrepreneurial development programs in rural versus non rural settings. The existing literature led us to expect that such programs will be more efficient and effective in urban areas. However, in this study, virtually no significant relationships were found between urban and rural states—defined by the proportion of the population living in non-metropolitan counties—on the variables used to measure the performance of an entrepreneurship development program. This suggests that the need for special programs tailored to rural entrepreneurs deserves further, more critical, evaluation.

Women Entrepreneurs and the Global Environment for Growth

Contents: 1. Introduction: Women Entrepreneurs and Growth Candida G. Brush, Anne de Bruin, Elizabeth J. Gatewood and Colette Henry PART I: CONTEXTUAL FACTORS 2. Marc Cowling 3. Gry Alsos, Ragnhild Steen Jensen and Elisabet Ljunggren 4. Annu Kotiranta, Anne Kovalainen and Petri Rouvinen 5. Lorna Treanor and Colette Henry 6. Friederike Welter and David Smallbone 7. Haya Al-Dajani and Sara Carter 8. Vartuhi Tonoyan, Michelle Budig and Robert Strohmeyer PART II: GROWTH STRATEGIES AND ENABLERS 9. Jennifer Jennings, Karen Hughes and Devereaux Jennings 10. Eleanor Shaw, Sara Carter and Wing Lam 11. Frances Hill, Claire Leitch and Richard Harrison 12. Kim Klyver and Siri Terjesen 13. Rodney Farr-Wharton and Yvonne Brunetto 14. Maura McAdam and Susan Marlow 15. Barbara Orser and Joanne Leck 16. Jill Kickul, Mark Griffiths, Lisa Gundry and Tatiana Iakovleva 17. Karin Aeirec, Polona Tominc and Miroslav Rebernik Index

Introduction: Women Entrepreneurs and Growth

Womenowned businesses are one of the fastest growing entrepreneurial populations in the world. They make signifi cant contributions to innovation, employment and wealth creation in all economies (Brush et al., 2006). Statistics from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) indicate that women entrepreneurs create and run businesses across all of the broad industrial sectors of extraction, transformation, business services and consumeroriented products. Women in developed economies are more likely to start businesses out of opportunity motivation while those in less developed economies are motivated by necessity. Latin America and Asia have higher rates of entrepreneurial activity for women than Europe and the US. However, women entrepreneurs make signifi cant contributions to economies in terms of jobs, innovations and gross national product (Allen et al., 2007). Despite the growing importance of women entrepreneurs, they are understudied and the paucity of research on the phenomenon of women’s entrepreneurship is well documented (Baker et al., 1997; de Bruin et al., 2006, 2007). Recent literature reviews suggest that studies about women entrepreneurs comprise less than 10 per cent of all research in the fi eld. The result is that we know comparatively little about women entrepreneurs even though they contribute positively to gross national product (GNP), jobs, innovations and societal welfare globally. For the past 10 years, the Diana Project has worked to resolve this disparity.

Introduction: an international multi-level research analysis

One of the many rich opportunities presented via an endeavour such as the Diana Project is to aggregate a cohort of researchers around a bounded topic of interest, and observe the way in which their discoveries both coalesce around key dimensions and break out to push forward the boundaries of understanding. An associated privilege of such a network is to seek from its members, and interested observers, written contributions to books that capture the vibrancy and value of those research activities. The international nature of the Diana network, and its associated activities such as conferences, is fertile ground for attaining the type of scope and scale that is often difficult to achieve in terms of linked individual research projects. We are fortunate to build on a fine tradition of Diana volumes (Brush et al., 2006; Brush et al., 2010; Hughes and Jennings, 2012) and it is our view that this current book has been no less successful in achieving its international ambitions. The 14 chapters in this volume span a wide geographic spread, and derive data from a diverse range of countries: the Czech Republic, the United States of America, China, Japan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Poland, Northern Ireland, Sweden, France, Slovenia and the Caribbean. Rather than gender merely being a variable of inquiry, the range of topics for which gender is now used as a lens to understanding is as varied as it is impressive (Jennings and Brush, 2013). Taking a gendered perspective to exploring ‘mainstream’ constructs has now been legitimized, rather than gender remaining notable only in a discrete list of topics that are deemed particularly germane to women and/or gender researchers (Henry et al., 2013). This is in part a function of how far gender and entrepreneurship has come as a field, but also mirrors the rich myriad of ways in which women enact entrepreneurship in their daily lives (Garcia and Welter, 2013; Gatewood et al., 2003). As a reflection of this enrichment of the gendered entrepreneurship agenda, and as a tribute to the urgent calls from