Gender Norms and Women’s Entrepreneurship
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Prior theories suggest that traditional gender norms may both encourage and discourage women’s entrepreneurship. Some scholars argue that traditional gender norms push women toward entrepreneurship to manage work-family conflict, while others argue they deter women by portraying entrepreneurship as incompatible with caregiving responsibilities. Progress on this question has been limited due to the slow-changing and endogenous nature of gender norms, making it difficult to provide direct evidence of the impact of gender norms on women’s entrepreneurship. Our findings suggest that contrary to the notion that traditional norms might drive women into entrepreneurship, the amplification of these traditional gender norms instead discourages women’s entrepreneurship.