Gender, culture, and implicit theories about entrepreneurs: a cross-national investigation

Considerable interest exists in understanding how people perceive and respond to entrepreneurs, more nominally referred to as implicit theories about entrepreneurship. A prominent aspect of people’s implicit theories is gender, perhaps because it is based on readily visible and universal biological attributes. Building on social role theory, we examine gender stereotypes associated with entrepreneurs in two culturally different countries, namely USA and India. Our investigation focuses on perceptions about entrepreneurs in general as well as entrepreneurs in specific venture forms (high- and low-growth ventures, commercial and social ventures). Results offer two new insights regarding gender stereotypes about entrepreneurs. First, despite some similarities across the two countries, there are crucial cross-national differences in how entrepreneurs are perceived. Second, gender stereotypes about entrepreneurs are quite cohesive and coherent in the USA, but considerably more fragmented and disjointed in India. Overall, our research suggests that there is significant cross-national variation in gender-typing of entrepreneurship, which provides support for the position that implicit theories about entrepreneurs result from socio-economic circumstances and cultural conditions of the society.