A Gendered Look at Entrepreneurship Ecosystems

Abstract

Entrepreneurship ecosystems are attracting significant interest, both practically and academically. Despite the extolled benefits of participating in ecosystems, there is evidence that women entrepreneurs’ participation, access to resources, and outcomes in ecosystems, vary significantly from those of men. In addition, emerging theoretical ecosystem frameworks have not explored where gender might matter conceptually. This panel symposium will explore current theories, data and methods that researchers are using to study entrepreneurship ecosystems and the findings that have been generated to date. The goal of the panel is to bring together a set of researchers, each of whom uses a different perspective to examine women’s participation in ecosystems, and explore where in ecosystems gender might matter.