Influence of individual and institutional factors on opportunity recognition and new venture creation among SME women entrepreneurs in India

The interest in women entrepreneurship is on the rise. Despite, the increase in the number of women entrepreneurs, a persistent gender gap in entrepreneurship is observed worldwide, and has been a cause of concern among researchers and practitioners. In India, the gender gap in entrepreneurship is highest in the world and women are pre- dominantly operating in the micro sector. It has been acknowledged that India cannot achieve its sustainable development goals without increasing the women participation in new venture creation across Small & Medium Enterprises (SME). To address this gap, it is imperative to understand the process of new venture creation and understand the factors that can promote women entrepreneurship in SMEs. New venture creation process begins with the notion of opportunity recognition, for both necessity driven and opportunity driven entrepreneurship. Opportunity recognition is dependent on both, individual factors and institutional factors. Individual factors include cognitive abilities such as education and experience. Furthermore, opportunity recognition is also influenced by support from institutional factors such as government policies, availability of funds, social desirability and received support from the family. Both, women and men face challenges in setting up their own businesses, but for women the barriers are often greater and harder to overcome. In societies with rigid views of traditionally male and female roles, frequently reinforced by cultural and religious beliefs, women’s opportunities for starting up enterprises are often limited. Gender stereotypes affect the tendency for women to evaluate business opportunities less favourable. Patriarchal attitude restricts women’s responsibilities to domestic and family work. Additionally, women are often confronted with a lack of government support in terms of policies and laws. Despite recognizing the importance of both individual and institutional factors, the research on factors influencing opportunity recognition by women entrepreneurs is limited. This research adopts a gendered lens to examine the influence of both individual and institutional factors. This study suggests a framework to create and enhance the participation of women entrepreneurs in new venture creation within SMEs in India. The proposed research framework was built upon the tenets of Human capital theory, Institutional theory and Resource based theory. Data for research was collected from 280 women entrepreneurs across four southern states of India, which was then analysed using partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). The results of these analysis confirmed that opportunity recognition fully mediates the relationship between family support, political support and new venture creation. It partially mediates the relationship between economic support, social support and new venture creation. Whereas, opportunity recognition proved to have no mediation effect between education, experience, technological support and new venture creation in context of this study. In a broader perspective, this study confirms that institutional factors influence opportunity recognition by women entrepreneurs within SMEs in India. The implication of this study is that more women can be encouraged to pursue entrepreneurship within SMEs if the policy makers recognize the significance of the institutional support. Thus, government, lending institutions, society and family should offer more support in terms of formulating women friendly policies, having confidence in their abilities and providing them with encouragement. At the same time, budding women entrepreneurs should seek more opportunities as extensive support is available from government, banks, women associations and society in general