Gender Differences Over Decision-Making in the Work-Family Interface of Microentrepreneurs in Ecuador

Drawing upon the family embeddedness perspective in entrepreneurship, this paper makes two contributions to the literature on gender and entrepreneurship. First, I incorporate the role of the family into the analysis of entrepreneurs' decision-making using micro-enterprises as a unit of analysis to show differences under both assumptions: the presence and absence of the work-family interface in entrepreneurship. Second, I used gender as a category and provide empirical evidence on gender differences on the determinants and factors at the individual, household, institutional and enterprise levels that differentially influence the decision-making of male and female entrepreneurs. The empirical analysis includes multi-group multiple-indicator multiple causes (MIMIC) models with categorical variables. Results suggest that considering the enterprise as an isolated sphere conceals several determinants of decision-making that are overshadowed mainly for female entrepreneurs. Indeed, females that own a microenterprise in Ecuador participate actively on entrepreneurial decision-making as well as male entrepreneurs, but the gendered division of labour and gender roles and perceptions emerges when the family is included in the analysis.