Women's entrepreneurship is an effective way to combat poverty, hunger and disease, to stimulate sustainable business practices, and to promote gender equality. Yet, deeply engrained cultural norms often prescribe gender-specific roles and behaviors that severely constrain the opportunities for women's entrepreneurial activities. This excellent new volume of work from the Diana Group explores this paradox. As women-entrepreneurs circumvent challenges and obstacles, they also ameliorate the cultural context for future women entrepreneurs. In this book, studies covering 40 countries document how culture affects women's entrepreneurship, and how women's entrepreneurship, in turn, shapes the cultural milieu. The work is organized into three main themes: (1) the socio-cultural context for women's entrepreneurship; (2) women's entrepreneurship as emancipation from traditional family roles; and (3) government policies and programs and self-determination in women's entrepreneurship. This illuminating and inspiring book offers valuable insights for students of women's entrepreneurship, practicing entrepreneurs, and public policy makers interested in promoting women's entrepreneurship in different cultural contexts around the world.

The renowned group of international contributors to this volume provide analysis of where and how gender plays a role in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Eleven essays examine how ecosystems influence women entrepreneurs and how women entrepreneurs influence their local ecosystems, both cross-nationally and through in-depth country studies. The studies build on rich qualitative and quantitative data from diverse contexts including the United States, Norway, India, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Chile. A special section of the book examines national and regional policies in support of growth-oriented women's entrepreneurship. The contributions highlight the significant variety of entrepreneurial ecosystems around the world and provide valuable insights for promoting growth-oriented women's entrepreneurship at the local, regional, and country level. Academic researchers in the areas of entrepreneurship, management, business strategy, economic geography, and gender studies as well as policy-makers at the regional, national, and supra-national levels will all find something valuable in this illuminating book. Contributors include: M. Akoorie, G.A. Alsos, J.E. Amoros, C.G. Brush, S. Coleman, D. Dutta, L.F. Edelman, L. Foss, P. Gabaldon, J. Gibb, D. Gimenez, U. Guelich, A.T. Hailemariam, M. Haugum, C. Henry, J.G. Hussain, L. Karsten, B. Kroon, E. Ljunggren, I.M. Lugalla, C. Lutz, V. Mandakovic, T.S. Manolova, X. Neumeyer, B. Orser, J. Poncela-Casasnovas, A. Robb, N. Sandhu, S.C. Santos, J.M. Scott, C. Seierstad, P. Sinha, M. van Veldhoven, F. Welter, S.R. Xavier, R.I. Yavuz

Angel Investing provides systematic and comprehensive review of the large body of research literature on angel investors. Based on the analysis and consideration of previous literature reviews, the authors created an organizing framework that captures the major aspects of the angel investment landscape including the major perspectives in angel investing: the angel investors (including angel networks and angel groups), the entrepreneurs and their ventures, the relationship and decision-process between angels and entrepreneurs, and performance. Angel Investing begins with a look at the angel investors themselves and the market characteristics that lead to angel investing. Section 2 focuses on the contributions made by angels as well as subgroups of angel investors, such as women and micro-angels. Section 3 discusses angel networks and public policy implications. Section 4 explores different typologies of angels, focusing on their reasons for investing and on some differences between angel investors and venture capitalists. Section 5 shifts focus to examine the other side of the dyad - the entrepreneurial firms - and reviews the literature that explores the firms that are seeking angel money. Section 6 moves back to the angels examining the decision making process in angel investing. Section 7 reviews the articles that look at angel investor and firm performance. Section 8 reviews the methodologies used by the researchers in the angel investor literature, thereby illustrating how the data collection and analytic tools have both changed and remained the same over time and then offers conclusions about the literature as well as suggestions for future research. The last section highlights the key and most critical issue around the angel investment literature - the lack of generalizable data and a dearth of strong methods. Each section provides a set of summary tables to aid the reader. These tables include every article reviewed in that section, the bibliographic data, main research question, theoretical perspective if applicable, and a summary of the findings.