Question

How do gender and geography shape entrepreneurship? Identify and discuss at least two examples.( 1 page single space answer)

Answer 1

In general, many factors contribute and get involved to discover and shape an entrepreneur or the resultant entrepreneurship. Gender and geography are significant factors, when it comes to shaping an entrepreneurship model. We will discuss below, each factor separately.

1. How 'gender' leads to shaping entrepreneurship:

In many ways gender contributes to the various choices and decisions a person makes throughout his or her life. From childhood to old age, from clothes to food and education and job, gender has its impact on the choices a person makes, based upon the time and situation. And this could be easily identified and studied by taking a sample from any field and running a male female ratio test. For eg. - male to-female students ration in mechanical engineering wing of a college, male-to-female ration of enrolment into a ballet dance workshop etc.

To start with we can look into the variation which has come in the no. of female entrepreneurs in the world over the time. As from the records and general social trends we can easily note that, the no. of female business owners have significantly increased over the last 2 - 3 decades, wherein the change started happening in the early 90's. As the no. of lady business owners was relatively low before that time period and it was one of case or a rare happening, considering women were kept more restricted and were not considered fit for something like running a business.However, the times changed and as women empowerment became the primary motto of most of the countries across the world, made it relatively easier for the women entrepreneurs to come up with their full potential and own and run business.

Therefore, when it comes to making choices and taking decisions, an individual's perceptual factors come into play (such as: self-efficacy, fear of failure, perseverance, regrets etc.) And most f these factors are influenced by a person's past experience and the kind of opportunities, success and failures an individual has dealt with in his/her life.

In most of the cases girl child and boy child are brought up differently in families. Boys and girls are treated somewhat differently by the parents, unintentionally and sometimes intentionally and that builds the psyche of that child (boy or girl) and the same way the experiences that a child (boy/girl) gathers from the community play a vital role in the decisions they make in the life ahead.

In the same way the decisions taken by an entrepreneurs depend upon their life experiences (which could be biased based on their gender), i.e. starting from the decision of becoming an entrepreneur, to what stream of business to pursue, to the mode of business and the promotion strategy, to the colour of logo to other intricate details come from the entrepreneurs personality and one of the major factor of personality is their gender. So that way we can understand that, gender plays a significant role in shaping a business venture and may impact big decisions to small details.

Example: Construction/real estate businesses are majorly owned by men. We hardly come across any lady's name as owner of real estate business.

This is because of the difference in the psyche of men and women and how and what they chose and how they think.

2. How 'geography' leads to shaping entrepreneurship:

As we have already touch based upon how the various factors impact the psyche of an entrepreneur to make decisions. We will now look into, how the geography contributes in the decision making of an entrepreneur.

Well geography is one of the major factors and include a large no. of other factors in it, as it is the over all surrounding, the environment, the location, weather, people, resource and many more. It include the major factors which are required to run a business.

Therefore, geography of the business owner contributes to a series of decision making, starting from, what business to chose from, what are the opportunities available (resources, market, obstacles etc.), what are the risks associated, what id the local market vibe and demand in other geographies.

Let's have a look at the examples of how geographical conditions contribute to the shaping of an entrepreneurship idea and its' execution. For example, a person living in a coastal area (eg. Goa, India) comes up with an idea of opening a small hotel in his ancestral home. So we can easily observe that this business idea and its execution is very much influenced by the geography and location of that person's residence. That is: since it is a coastal area (beach side) the place attracts may tourists and therefore, there is demand for places where tourists can stay. It also allows the business owner to cater to general needs of tourists staying at the hotel, such as sea food, coconut water, local market shopping etc. as his hotels location is such that, all these are at close proximity and could be easily obtained.

Thus, a business's idea, its promotion and successful running is highly dependent on the geography it's been situated at, as multiple of the factors are further controlled by the geography that helps in smooth and successful running of the business.