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EXPLAINING GENDER EFFECTS ON ENTREPRENEURIAL BEHAVIOUR OF
STUDENTS
THE CASE OF A NIGERIAN UNIVERSITY
Afolabi O.O., Egbetokun A. A., Sanni M., Dada A. D., Jesuleye O. A. and Siyanbola W. O.
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Background An entrepreneur is a person who recognises
opportunities, has ideas and uses them to create or develop a business (Gartner, 1998)
It has generally been argued that the institutions of higher learning is one of the best places to nurture these characteristics (see Wang and Wong, 2004).
For this reason, an exploration of the propensity of undergraduates for entrepreneurship would be of value for policy making.
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Background Increasingly, female entrepreneurs are considered
important for economic development
They contribute to employment creation and economic growth through their increasing numbers,
They also make a contribution to the diversity of entrepreneurship in the economic process
This may imply that there are different factors explaining female and male entrepreneurship in a country
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Study Aims The literature is largely conclusive on the disparity
between male and female entrepreneurs.
For instance, Fischer et al. (1993), Brush (1992), Carter et al. (1997), Chaganti and Parasuraman (1996) and Verheul (2003) all showed that female and male entrepreneurs differ with respect to their personal and business profile.
Following this stream of literature, our first aim in our first aim in this paper is to assess gender differentials in this paper is to assess gender differentials in students’ interest and involvement in students’ interest and involvement in entrepreneurial practice in Nigeria. entrepreneurial practice in Nigeria.
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Study Aims Delmar and Davidsson (2000) found that the factors
explaining the nascent entrepreneurship rate of men have limited value in explaining the nascent entrepreneur status of women.
Shane et al. (1991) found that it is difficult to identify start-up reasons that equally apply to both genders and across countries.
A further aim of this paper, therefore, is to establish to establish whether or not there are different factors whether or not there are different factors explaining female and male entrepreneurship in explaining female and male entrepreneurship in Nigeria.Nigeria.
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Study Variables More recently intentions models (Bird, 1988; Boyd &
Vozikis, 1994) that focus on attitudes and their antecedents have been proposed to better explain the entrepreneurship process.
Davidsson (1995) related personal variables including age, gender, education, vicarious experience and experiences of change to a variety of attitudes that influenced conviction and entrepreneurial intentions (Peterman and Kennedy, 2003).
Adegbite and Abereijo (2006) and Wang and Wong (2004) also showed that there is a relationship between family background and entrepreneurial behaviour.
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Research Methods Data was collected among penultimate and final year
engineering/technology and science undergraduates of the University of Ibadan (UI) using questionnaire
We investigated the relationship between the explanatory variables and the entrepreneurial behaviour of male and female students separately, with a view to determining the explanatory power of each variable.
Correlation analysis was used to evaluate the relationship between the dependent and independent variables
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Gender Differentials in Students’ Interest and Involvement in Entrepreneurial Practice
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91.5192.31Interested in starting own business (N = 299; 106)
18.6924.32Presently involved in business (N = 296; 107)
FemaleMale
Percentage
There is no obvious difference in the interest of male and female undergraduates in entrepreneurship...
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3.331.01Sibling
-3.03Events
-5.05Relatives
3.336.06Peers
16.6713.13Parents
16.6717.17Self-actualization
16.6720.20Desire to make money
43.3334.34Personal interest
Female (N = 30)Male (N = 99)
PercentageFactors
...or the factors that motivate them…
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Correlates
.096.135*.241*.191**Exposure to entrepreneurial training/course
.521**.553**.069.112Access to enough capital
.137.286**.133.088Level of disposition towards starting a new business
-.063.150*-.060-.035Is the business on-going?
.189.168**.251*.165**Any close relative of yours initiated/run a business before?
.028.126*.098.005Is the business on-going?
.089.194**.048.149*Any of your parents initiated or run a business before?
.135.005-.241-.153*Father’s range of monthly income
.276**.047.020-.089Mother’s highest level of education
-.248*-.010.061-.038Family size
.115-.053-.107-.129*Marital Status
.028-.161**-.036-.116*Age
FemaleMaleFemaleMale
Are you interested in starting your own business?
Are you presently engaged in any business?
Independent Variables
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Summary of Correlates…
Number of CorrelatesVariable
FemaleMale
26Entrepreneurial involvement
38Entrepreneurial interest
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…and what they imply The number of factors that are significantly associated with
male and female undergraduates’ involvement in entrepreneurship differ widely.
The entrepreneurial behaviour of male students is responsive to a much broader set of determinants than female entrepreneurial behaviour.
The present involvement and expressed interest of students in entrepreneurship is influenced by dissimilar factors for both male and female undergraduates.
In both cases, a larger number of factors correlate significantly with interest than with present involvement in entrepreneurship.
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Age Age of the students is only a significant determinant of male
students’ involvement in business (r = -0.116; p<0.05) and their entrepreneurial interest (r = -0.161; p<0.01).
Whether or not female students would be involved or interested in business seemingly does not so much depend on their age.
Interestingly, the negative correlation values observed with male students’ entrepreneurial behaviour suggest that the interest of students in entrepreneurship could increase with increasing age.
However, it is not impossible that the connection between age and entrepreneurial behaviour is inverted U-shaped, in which case interest and involvement in entrepreneurship begin to fall after a certain age.
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Marital Status Whether or not a student is single or married is only
important in explaining the involvement of male students in entrepreneurship.
The significant negative correlation (r = -0.129; p<0.05) leads us to believe that the more mature set of male students (i.e. married, divorced or widowed) are more involved in business while in school than their single counterparts.
With the female students, marital status may not make so much of a difference.
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Exposure to Entrepreneurial Training A significant relationship exists between this variable
and male students’ interest in starting their own business (r = 0.135; p<0.05) as well as their present involvement in business (r = 0.191; p<0.01).
For their female counterparts, exposure to training is only significantly associated with the present involvement in business (r=0.135; p<0.05).
The course of study or students’ academic performance apparently has nothing to do with their entrepreneurial behaviour.
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Family Size The mean family size for our sample is 7.19
(s.d. = 1.96).
The entrepreneurial interest of female undergraduates from large families tends to fall with increasing family size.
The position of the student among the children in the family was found to exert non-significant influence.
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Mother’s Qualification The only case where parents’ educational
qualification appeared to matter is in the positive correlation of mothers’ highest educational qualification with the interest of female undergraduates in entrepreneurship.
It is thus likely the daughters of highly educated mothers are could get less interested in entrepreneurship when they leave school.
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Father’s Income The mother’s earning is not significantly associated
with any of the variables representing the students’ entrepreneurial behaviour.
On the contrary, the father’s monthly income is significantly negatively associated with the present involvement of male undergraduates in business (r = -0.153; p<0.05).
This clearly suggests that students’ tendency to be engaged in business during their undergraduate days increases as the father’s income increases; and this is likely to remain so when the students graduate
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We found that the entrepreneurial history of the parents only significantly influences the present involvement and future interest of male undergraduates.
Those whose parents have been in business in the past are more likely to do business while in school and to be interested in starting their own businesses after school.
Their entrepreneurship interest in even reinforced if the parents’ business(es) is/are on-going.
The same trend is observed with the entrepreneurial history of close relatives, except that the present involvement of female undergraduates in entrepreneurship is also influenced significantly by this factor.
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High levels of concern about entrepreneurial risk may translate to low undergraduate entrepreneurial involvement.
Students, irrespective of their gender, would be more encouraged towards entrepreneurship if sufficient capital is made available to them.
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Conclusions and Implications Using entrepreneurial training to stimulate
students’ interest in entrepreneurship will yield positive results.
The importance of making funds available for start-up businesses cannot be gainsaid.
The dissimilarities in the factors that influence male and female entrepreneurial behaviour imply that the same policies might not achieve similar results across the two genders.
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