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Study summary

Same-gender peer effects

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Same-gender teammates can work as powerful role models and boost entrepreneurial attitudes, beliefs and intentions.

General description

Students are divided into teams that vary in terms of the proportion of same-gender peers so that each team member is able to look at the importance of same-gender peer effects.

Benchmark programme

A full-semester university entrepreneurship course, the core of which is formed by ‘business challenges’. Students collaborate in teams of four to five with real-life entrepreneurs in preparing a 15-page business plan for the entrepreneur’s startup. The course forces the students to collaborate while having little to no prior knowledge about one another. Along with the group work, weekly lectures are held to equip students with the necessary knowledge.

Aim

  1. To boost entrepreneurial intentions, attitudes toward entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial self-efficacy among students

Context

A university in a city with a reputation for being one of the main entrepreneurial centres of Europe.

Participants

Undergraduate students who take a full-semester mandatory entrepreneurship course as part of their major in business administration and students who choose human resource education and management as their main subject. The average age is 21 years old and 21 per cent of them have either worked in a startup or founded their own company prior to the course.

Tweak

The proportion of same-gender peers in the team varies from one team to another.

Results

  • Having a higher proportion of same-gender peers slightly improved students’ attitudes towards entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial self-efficacy.
  • Women students with a higher proportion of same-gender peers in their team experienced higher entrepreneurial intentions.

Policy implications

  • A level of gender-homogeneity in entrepreneurial teams can be beneficial for developing better entrepreneurial attitudes, beliefs and intentions.
  • In contexts where interacting with real-life entrepreneurs might be difficult, peers with similar characteristics can act as useful role models, particularly for individuals who are underrepresented in entrepreneurship, such as women.

Full study