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Study summary

Matching students with same-gender role models

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Providing women with the opportunity to connect and interact with same-gender entrepreneurs can boost their entrepreneurial self-efficacy and positively influence the development of key antecedents to entrepreneurial intentions.

General description

Students are matched with an entrepreneur of either the same or different gender to see whether same-gender role models are more effective than different-gender ones. It’s of particular interest to see whether exposing young women to successful women entrepreneurs can help to deconstruct the male stereotype and avoid its consequences.

Benchmark programme

A full-semester mandatory entrepreneurship course, the core of which is formed of ‘business challenges’. Students collaborate in teams of four to five with real-life entrepreneurs to prepare a 15-page business plan for the entrepreneur’s startup. The course coordinators recommend that teams and entrepreneurs meet at least twice during the course period.

Aim

  1. To increase students’ entrepreneurial self-efficacy, attitudes and intentions, especially among women.

Context

The entrepreneurship course took place in a university located in a city with the reputation of being one of Europe’s entrepreneurial centres.

Participants

Undergraduate students who took part in a full-semester mandatory entrepreneurship course as part of their major in business administration and students who chose human resource education and management as their main subject.

Tweak

Some teams are matched with a woman entrepreneur, while the rest are matched with a man entrepreneur. That gives four types of student–entrepreneur combination:

  • Women students matched with woman entrepreneur
  • Women students matched with man entrepreneur
  • Men students matched with man entrepreneur
  • Men students matched with woman entrepreneur

Results

  • Women students matched with women entrepreneurs presented higher increases in entrepreneurial self-efficacy and smaller decreases in entrepreneurial intentions than women students matched with men entrepreneurs.
  • Men students presented similar patterns when matched with men entrepreneurs, although the effect was much weaker.
  • Students’ attitudes towards entrepreneurship didn’t differ among students matched with same-gender or different-gender entrepreneurs.

Policy implications

  • Providing women with the opportunity to connect and interact with same-gender entrepreneurs can boost their entrepreneurial self-efficacy and positively influence the development of key antecedents to entrepreneurial intentions.

Full study