Title: Investigating the effect of education on women's entrepreneurship

Authors: Mohammad Javad Razmi; Somaye Rasoli Firoozabadi

Addresses: Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Khorasan Razavi, Mashhad, Vakilabad Highway, 9177948974, Iran ' Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Khorasan Razavi, Mashhad, Vakilabad Highway, 9177948974, Iran

Abstract: Despite the importance of female entrepreneurship in recent years, there is still a large gap between men and women entrepreneurs. Understanding the factors that can contribute to women's entrepreneurship and fill the existing gap can help to solve this problem. This paper investigates the effect of education on women's entrepreneurship in the selection of the 29 member states of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) in 2012. OLS method was used to estimate the effect of the education and other influential variables. Results show that the average years of schooling, which is used as a variable to measure the level of education has a significant positive correlation with women's entrepreneurship. The Entrepreneurial Intention variable also has a positive and significant relationship with women entrepreneurship, while there is a significant negative relationship between female unemployment rate, GDP and life expectancy and women's entrepreneurship. But there is no relationship between gender inequality and women's entrepreneurship.

Keywords: entrepreneurship; women entrepreneurs; female entrepreneurs; education level; schooling; gender inequality; entrepreneurial intention; female unemployment rate; GDP; gross domestic product; life expectancy.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLIC.2016.075693

International Journal of Learning and Intellectual Capital, 2016 Vol.13 No.2/3, pp.273 - 288

Received: 22 Jun 2015
Accepted: 06 Oct 2015
Published online: 31 Mar 2016 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article