Mind the gender gap: the impact of university education on the entrepreneurial entry of female and male STEM graduates

Evila Piva () and Paola Rovelli ()
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Evila Piva: Politecnico di Milano
Paola Rovelli: Free University of Bozen-Bolzano

Small Business Economics, 2022, vol. 59, issue 1, No 8, 143-161

Abstract: Abstract Women are consistently underrepresented among graduate entrepreneurs. This is especially true among the entrepreneurs who graduate in STEM fields. Here, we aim at identifying factors that reduce/enlarge the gender imbalance in entrepreneurship among STEM graduates. In particular, we explore the underinvestigated association between university education in STEM fields and entrepreneurial entry of recent female and male graduates considering graduates’ whole university curriculum. Our analyses on the graduates who obtained a Master of Science degree in the 2005–2009 period from Politecnico di Milano reveal that training in economics and management reduces the gender imbalance in entrepreneurial entry among STEM recent graduates. The gap is instead larger among the graduates who attended courses that aggregate students from different STEM fields or did an internship.

Keywords: Female entrepreneurship; STEM; Entrepreneurial entry; University curriculum; L26; M13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11187-021-00525-1

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