What Brings Female Professionals to Entrepreneurship? Exploring the Antecedents of Women’s Professional Entrepreneurship

Abstract

This study explores how female professionals engage in starting their own businesses, known as professional entrepreneurship. In particular, this study specifies what factors foster the likelihood of self-employment of female professionals. Drawing upon the push and pull theories of entrepreneurship, we argue that individual capabilities (as a pull factor) make the self-employment of female professionals less likely, while discrimination experiences (as a push factor) make the self-employment of female professionals more likely. Given such bifurcated effects of these factors, we examine the combinatory effects of individual capabilities and discrimination experiences (which are specified as attribute-based and family-based discrimination experiences) on the rate of self-employment of female professionals. With a sample of 1356 female lawyers in the U.S., we test our hypotheses predicting the rate of self-employment with respect to prior salary and discrimination experiences. Our results reveal that prior salary (a pull factor) motivates female lawyers to stay at the traditional law firms, whereas attribute-based discrimination experiences (a push factor) motivate them to open their own office. Furthermore, we find that such a push effect is pronounced only among the female lawyers with lower salaries. Then, the empirical findings are discussed to elaborate the process of female professionals’ entrepreneurship.

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