Social capital and woman entrepreneurs: the characteristics of social capital among woman entrepreneurs across different life stages

Abstract

This research examined women entrepreneurs’ social capital in their different life stages. The main hypothesis is that women would have different levels and forms of social capital as they move from one stage to another in their lives in a professional cycle. We observe emotional support and encouragement from the environment, and instrumental social capital, through which the entrepreneur accesses information, business partners, and other resources relevant to her entrepreneurial process. A survey was emailed to a sample of women’s businesses detected with the help of an algorithm in a business register. Finally, there were 340 fully answered questionnaires collected for the statistical analysis that utilized Levene’s F-test to confirm equality of variances, followed by Tukey’s post hoc test. Otherwise, Tamhane’s test does not assume equality of variances. Based on the study results, we could not confirm that motherhood, which includes parenting, being a wife, and being a housewife, has different impacts on women entrepreneurs in different life stages. We also cannot support the hypothesis that there is a difference in the importance of social networks. However, our research confirmed the difference in the importance of parental influence and the influence of friends and acquaintances on their entrepreneurial journey.

Keywords

• woman entrepreneurs
• female entrepreneurs’ social capital
• social network
• motherhood