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Introduction
Entrepreneurial activity is critical to economic development and the effective functioning of free market economies (Hessels et al., 2008). Interestingly, most entrepreneurs are men; in fact, in the early twenty-first century still almost twice as many men as women are choosing to become entrepreneurs (Acs et al., 2004). Although there is an upward trend, a review of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) Reports that between 2000 and 2015/2016 across the countries studied, the ratio of female to male Total Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA) rose only from 0.5 in 2000 to 0.73 in 2015/2016 (Kelley et al., 2016; Reynolds et al., 2000). The special GEM 2012 Women’s Report observed a female to male TEA ratio of 0.69 across the 67 countries studied (Kelley et al., 2013). Despite this positive trend, the gender gap in entrepreneurship continues to exist and poses a problem because women represent half of the population in most countries and economies would benefit greatly from increased participation by women in entrepreneurial activity.
Much of the research that is focused on uncovering the determinants of entrepreneurial interest investigates entrepreneurial intentions. Entrepreneurial intention, the likelihood that a person will engage in entrepreneurial activity (Erikson, 1998), is a well-established predictor of entrepreneurship. Research on the determinants of entrepreneurial intentions has been dominated by a focus on individual and dispositional characteristics (Gupta et al., 2008, 2009; Wilson et al., 2007; Zhao et al., 2005). A few studies have investigated structural and contextual variables that might be related to people’s desire to become an entrepreneur (Lee et al., 2011; Nicolaou and Shane, 2010; Shneor et al., 2013). The role of cultural characteristics in entrepreneurial intentions has received some limited attention (Liñán and Chen, 2009; Shinnar et al., 2012). For example, McGrath et al. (1992) suggested that cultural masculinity is positively related to entrepreneurial activity. This result is supported by Busenitz and Lau (1996), Gupta et al. (2009), and Shinnar et al. (2012). However, these studies do not provide insight into the processes underlying the relationship between cultural masculinity and entrepreneurial intentions and it is unclear how cultural masculinity may be related to an individual’s intention to engage in entrepreneurial activities.
Building upon Ahl (2006), this study aims...