The Empirical Research of Women Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Performance in the Entrepreneurship Policy Context

1. Introduction

The society shows a rapid growth in the proportion of women in the top management and entrepreneurship of companies and non-profit organizations. This growth in the number of female CEO and managers attracts the research attention about its outcome and performance in the workplace. Carter, Shaw, Wilson & Lam (2007) and Welsh, Memili, & Sadoon (2014) addresses the extent to which gender difference in their entrepreneurship ability and women workers continue to face barriers when seeking positions in executive levels of leadership. Many women continue to be under-represented as leaders and senior managers worldwide. However, the role of women entrepreneurship draws the attention of UN, the World Bank and OECD national governments (UN Women, 2020; OECD, 2021). Investment in female entrepreneurial capacities increase women’s empowerment and reduce gender inequality for any entrepreneurship policy (Sachs, 2020). Female entrepreneurship is regarded as the country’s sustainable economic development to achieve UN sustainable development goals(SDGs) and gender equality for empowering all women involved.

Female entrepreneurship for the food sector can achieve of goals 8 “decent work and economic growth”, 9 “industry, innovation and infrastructure” and 12 “responsible consumption and production”. The food sector includes food sales, fast food, coffee shops, beverages, and restaurants. Food systems and sectors possess multi-faceted and complex set of challenges from farm to fork (Chen & Antonelli, 2020; Pounds et al., 2022; Richter & Klöckner, 2017), but women entrepreneurship for the food sector focuses on service-oriented industry. Akehurst, Simarro, & Mas-Tur (2012), Huarng, Mas-Tur, & Yu (2012) and Mas-Tur & Ribeiro-Soriano (2014) indicates that women's businesses are usually concentrated in the services sector, especially in those activities in which they have traditionally had a greater presence such as retail, education, hospitality and personal assistance. United Nation emphasizes great importance to food sector in the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs). Female entrepreneurship for the food sector achieves SDGs to promote sustainability by contributing decent work and economic growth, creating industry, innovation and infrastructure and guaranteeing responsible consumption and adequate production. Previous studies focus on examining the determinants of food purchasing behavior and intention (Alhammadi, Santos-Roldán, Cabeza-Ramírez, 2021; Sayee et al., 2011) However, there are many unanswered questions about women entrepreneurship policy instruments and empirical evidence regarding the potential for women entrepreneurship to contribute to food sector in affecting sustainability performance.

The study fills this gap by examining what degree in a workplace affect women entrepreneurship performance and investigating the characteristics of successful policy support. Andersén (2011) and Boden & Nucci (2000) compares the performance difference of businesswomen and businessmen to justify gender effect of female entrepreneurship study from the management theory. There are some economic sectors where women in management positions are usually better supported (Ahl, 2006; Zgheib, 2018). This study answers some research questions by investigating women entrepreneurs for the women’s entrepreneurship policy recommendations. Some studies can make women assistance policy recommendation such as the financial support, and marketing skills and business knowledge training (Orser, Riding & Manley, 2006; Schroder, Bobek & Horvat, 2021). Some studies also examine the challenges that the women workers face (Lim et al., 2015; Nair, 2019). Although the issues of female entrepreneurs gain attention from the press and social media, previous studies focusing on women entrepreneurs for achieving policy recommendation are scare. The managerial implications and policy recommendation are provided for the women entrepreneurship research for achieving policy recommendation.

2. Literature Review

Entrepreneurship can help alleviate poverty, enhance health care and education, and reduce environmental destruction (Raman, Vinuesa & Nedungadi, 2021; Terjesen, Bosma & Stam, 2016). Women in the organization suffer from the glass ceiling level and major barriers to advance to the entrepreneurship management (Baxixauli-Soler, Belda-Ruiz & Sanchez-Marin,2015). Akehurst, Simarro, & Mas-Tur (2012) examine the gender effect of key factors that drive women to create business competitive advantage. The study observes which factors for women entrepreneurs with business success for achieving policy support development. The factors of affecting the performance of women entrepreneurship are examined. The research aims to contribute to analyze women entrepreneurship from a gender perspective for making policy recommendation for women entrepreneurship assistance program. In the sustainable development the policy tool can promote and support women’s entrepreneurship as a means for by contributing decent work and economic growth, creating industry, innovation and infrastructure and guaranteeing responsible consumption and adequate production.

Examining the role of women entrepreneurship is increasing, but research on women entrepreneurs assistance program and policy is scarce(Melero, 2011; Ramaswami, Huang & Dreher, 2014). Performance difference in companies exists between women and men (Fairlie & Robb, 2009; Rosa, Carter, & Hamilton, 1996). Carter & Rosa (1998) and Watson(2002) find that women’s job performance tends to underperform from revenues, profitableness and sales in comparison to men’s job performance. De Clercq et al.(2011), Hechavarria & Reynolds(2009)and Langowitz & Minniti (2007) examine the performance differences in women entrepreneurship and finds mixed results on performance difference with gender in entrepreneurship. However, previous studies concern with the role of women entrepreneurship for sustainability development (Bastian, Metcalfe & Zali, 2019; Bastida, Pinto, Olveira Blanco & Vancelo, 2020; Contreras-Barraza et al., 2021), but few studies examine policy recommendation for women entrepreneurship issues.

Brush & Cooper (2012) recognize the need for a theoretical framework to examine women entrepreneurship and leadership. Some business model encompasses the ability of the women entrepreneurship (Budworth & Mann, 2010; Jennings & McDougal, 2007; Watson, 2003). Research progresses towards equality opportunities between men and women, but women feel that they must take care of family and housework (Akehurst et al., 2012; Kantor, 2002; Scott, 1986; Watson, 2002). Women's entrepreneurship involves a complex process and challenge. In general, women's income is lower than men's, which drives women entrepreneurship (Ferdousi & Mahmud, 2019; Wilson, Kickul & Marlino, 2007). Accordingly, women entrepreneurship growth is especially high in developed countries if a government has adequate entrepreneurship assistance program and policy (Contreras-Barraza et al., 2021; Fernández, García-Centeno, & Patier ;2021).

Feminist theory states that men and women is equal opportunity, but women for difficulty work environment because of lacking access to business networks or financial resources (Calás, Smircich, L., & Bourne, 2009; Melero, 2011; Morris, Miyasaki, Watters, & Coombes, 2006; Orser, Spence, Riding, & Carrington, 2010). Women face some barriers when they implement entrepreneurship plan or run a company. Therefore, gender differences examines economic power, social structure and class structure , but women's performance in business innovation, job creation, and economic growth is significant increase (Ahl,2006 ;De Bruin, Brush, & Welter,2007;Orser et al., 2010; Schein, 2007). However, the gender heterogeneity of top management team for organizational performance findings are not conclusive (Budworth & Mann, 2010; Bantel and Jackson, 1989; Langowitz & Minniti). Therefore, there is no empirical study that examines whether women entrepreneurship has an impact on sustainability performance from the policy perspective.

Women entrepreneurship is important for economic growth and welfare creation (Brush & Cooper, 2012; Mas-Tur & Ribeiro-Soriano, 2014; Mas-Verdú, Ribeiro-Soriano, & Roig-Tierno, 2015; Orser, Riding, & Manley, 2006) and sustainable development (Ferdousi & Mahmud, 2019; Sehroder, Bobek & Horvat, 2021). Women entrepreneurship issues include gender differences, motivation and barriers for business start-up (Fairlie &Robb, 2009, Ferdousi & Mahmud, Laguía, et al., 2022; Ibrahim, Angelidis & Tomic, 2009) and examine success factors for women entrepreneurs (Bird &Brush, 2002; Jennings & McDougal, 2007). Women entrepreneurs are motivated by economic factors, and they often adopt entrepreneurship for opportunities development (Kantor, 2002; Scott & Barnes, 2011; Watson, 2002). To understand the motivation and barriers factors for women entrepreneurship is a research agenda to be explored for implementing policy recommendation.

Gender is an important performance difference variable for the women entrepreneurship research (Autio, Pathak, & Wennberg, 2013; Ibrahim, Angelidis & Tomic, 2009). Although some progress of gender equality in business environment, it is important to examine gender performance differences for women entrepreneurship research (Dagoudo et al., 2023; Forret, Sullivan, & Mainiero, 2010; Vracheva,.& Stoyneva,.2020). Scott & Barnes (2011) and Constantinidis et al. (2019) examines the relationship between gender and career mobility. The theoretical background relates to family researches such as the work–family balance perspective (Jennings & McDougald, 2007; Rey-Marti, Porcar, & Mas-Tur, 2015), the work–family interface perspective (Qu, & Zhao, 2012) and family support (Grant-Vallone & Ensher, 2011; Morrisson & Jutting, 2005). However, despite the interest and excitement of family support and women entrepreneurship, there is a paucity of family support research in this women entrepreneurship area.

Sustainable development is regarded as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (United Nations, 2019). Sustainable performance is defined as the meeting and balancing of current and future stakeholder needs and expectations by ensuring profitability (Artiach et al., 2010; ; Zgheib, 2018). Sustainable performance consists of environmental and financial performances (Maletic et al., 2014; 2015). Epstein and Roy (2001) and Engert et al. (2016) compose sustainable performance frameworks including environmental and social performance to increase market share, enhance brand image, foster the quality of the product or service and drive financial performance.

Lozano (2008) develops sustainability performance into three dimensions and various set of indicators for organizations’ sustainable policy implementation. However, corporate sustainable performance is hardly assessed in practice and empirically tested linking stakeholder demands and sustainability performance (Asif et al., 2011, 2013; Aslam, Elmagrhi, Rehman & Ntim, 2021; Maletic et al., 2015; Wagner,2015). Sustainability performance is increasingly becoming a hot topic in the field of service industry (Aslam et al., 2021; Chou et al., 2012; Chowdhury & Quaddus, 2016; Manz et al., 2015). Sustainability performance includes national economic growth, global environmental protection and social responsibility (Arnold, 2017; Morioka & de Carvalho, 2016). The research examining whether women entrepreneurship have contributed to achieving sustainability performance. Therefore, this study considers sustainability performance dimensions of women entrepreneurship for the food sector to achieve SDGs including female entrepreneurship can achieve of goals 8 “decent work and economic growth”, 9 “industry, innovation and infrastructure” and 12 “responsible consumption and production”.

Policy recommendation for women entrepreneurs is to help more women engage in entrepreneurial intention and activity for achieving the sustainability performance. However, entrepreneurship policy instruments may be biased and do not take into consideration women face in different entrepreneurial environment contexts (Henry, Coleman, Foss, Orser & Brush, 2021; Laguia et al., 2022). However, many countries fail to implement women entrepreneurship policy and offer few or no programs that operationalize their policy (OECD, 2021). Policy are identified as an important research of the entrepreneurial ecosystem (Brown & Mason, 2017; Vracheva & Stoyneva, 2020). Hopefully, the research purpose of women entrepreneurship policy can offer valuable insights from policy perspectives to offer potential policy solution and link policy recommendation instruments for women entrepreneurial ecosystem.

3. Research Methodology

The research tests an empirical model for the practical situation on the basis of research variables and constructs by employing SEM approach. The research objective is to develop an empirical model to study and measure research constructs in women entrepreneurship and sustainability performance from entrepreneurship policy perspectives. Personal interviews are conducted with a convenient sample of 20 participants of women entrepreneurs in Taiwan. Through this step, participants are ensured of personal anonymity and confidentiality of the information shared during voluntary interviews.

After finishing personal interview, an integrative model draws on these sets of sustainability performance antecedent factors including barriers, family support, motivation and women entrepreneurship capabilities from policy perspective. The research purpose is to examine the characteristics of successful women entrepreneurship policy and to develop an empirical model to measure variables relative to the sustainability performance of women entrepreneurship for implementing policy support and recommendation. Questionnaire is designed after personal interview, literature review and pilot study. The questionnaires are pre-tested composed of women entrepreneurs to clarify or eliminate misleading or ambiguous questions before final distribution, which is modified. This study collects data from women entrepreneurs in Taiwan for engaging in food industry. Women entrepreneurs are surveyed by using online questionnaire containing items dealing with barriers, family support, motivation, entrepreneurship capabilities, and performance. All questionnaire items measure women entrepreneurs’ perceptions on seven-point scale.

The study employs SEM to test hypotheses. After reviewing the management literature and conducting a preliminary pre-test study with 20 participants, this study examines five groups of research constructs: barriers, family support, motivation, entrepreneurship capabilities, and performance. (please see Figure 1). Therefore, the research formulates the following research hypotheses:

H1: 

Barrier has a negative effect on women entrepreneurship capabilities.

H2: 

Family support has a positive effect on women entrepreneurship capabilities.

H3: 

Motivation has a positive effect on women entrepreneurship capabilities.

H4: 

Barrier has a positive effect on sustainability performance.

H5: 

Family support has a positive effect on sustainability performance.

H6: 

Motivation has a positive effect on sustainability performance.

H7: 

Women entrepreneurship capabilities have a positive effect on the sustainability performance.

A draft of self-administrated questionnaire which comprises 5 research constructs for the research shows in Table 1. The items of the variables in the survey use a 7-point Likert scale with anchorage from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree” and from “not at all” to “extensively”. 24 items capture barriers, family support, motivation, entrepreneurship capabilities, and performance, and this study uses Akehurst, Simarro & Mas-Tur’s (2012) and Carter et al’s (2007) 5-item scale to measure barrier. Fairlie & Robb (2009) and Jennings & McDougal(2007) measures a 3-item scale to reflect family support. The study uses a 6-item instrument from Rey-Marti, Porcar & Mas-Tur (2015), and Melero(2011) to measure motivation. Terrell & Troilo(2010) and Watson(2002) uses 6-item instrument to capture entrepreneurship capabilities, and employs Hermundsdottir & Aspelund (2022)’s and Watson(2002) 4-item instrument to measure sustainability performance.

Questionnaire is completed after a comprehensive literature review and pre-test study. The study sends the online questionnaire to women entrepreneurs in the food sector form open data of Ministry of Economic Affairs. Data collects a sample of 175 women-led firms in Taiwan. The questionnaire was distributed in March to June 2022 through online or mail survey of women entrepreneurs for the food sector.

4. Results

4.1. Sample Characteristics

The study obtains 175 usable questionnaires from online survey. Married status (60%) outnumber Single (38%), and 35% are between the ages of 41 to 50. For the education status of respondents, 49% of respondents have undergraduate degrees and 31% of respondents have a master’s degree or higher and 15% of respondents have a senior high school degree. Regarding to respondents’ entrepreneurship experience, 41% of respondents have 5 to 10 years; 37 % of respondents have 6 to 9 under 5 years and 16% of respondents have 11 to 15 years. 46% of women entrepreneurs manage coffee shop followed by managing beverage(26%). Most company size are under 10 employees (58%) and 11-50 employee (20%). Table 1 presents the demographic characteristics of the women entrepreneur sample.

4.2. Measurement Model

Table 2 provides the questionnaire items, mean value, and standard deviations of research constructs in the measurement model outputs. The measurement model shows that 24 standardized loadings are high and have t-values with significant (p < 0.01).

The adequacy of the measurement model tests reliability (Cronbach’s alpha), convergent validity, and discriminant validity. This study examines a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and reliability analysis for all the constructs (barriers, family support, motivation, women entrepreneurship capabilities, and sustainability performance). The empirical results indicate that composite construct reliability values and composite reliabilities exceed the threshold of 0.70 with adequate composite reliability. Average variance extracted (AVE) values shows indicators’ degree of shared representation with the constructs. The lowest value for average variance extracted is 0.63 with the convergent validity of the measures. The convergent validity of and discriminant validity for all research constructs are shown in Table 3.

A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) assesses the good-of-fit of the measurement. As a result, CFA is a good fit for the data collection((χ2 = 459.47, df = 174, p = 0.000, RMSEA = 0.055, CFI = 0.92, NFI = 0.93 , GFI = 0.91). Overall fit indices for the models show in Table 4. The chi-squared test yields values of 459.47 for samples with 74 degrees of freedom, p = .00. Chi-squared values, root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) (0.055), goodness of fit index(GFI)(0.91), comparative fit index (CFI) (0.92) and normed fit index (NFI) (0.93) is adequate to assess model fit. Fit indices yield values that support a good model fit for the dataset.

4.3. Structural Model

The result of each research hypothesis examines the causal relationship among research constructs is presented in Fig. 1. Table 5 presents results of analyses of the SEM path coefficients in the structural model describing the relationships among constructs. Research results support 5 hypotheses: barrier has a negative effect on entrepreneurship capabilities(H1)( (β = -0.47, t = 5.84, p = 0.000); family support has a positive effect on entrepreneurship capabilities (H2)( β = 0.76, t = 7.47, p = 0.000); family support has a positive effect on performance(H5) (β = 0.37, t = 4.15, p = 0.000); motivation has a positive effect on performance (H6) (β = 0.72, t = 7.34, p = 0.000) and entrepreneurship capabilities have a positive effect on the performance (H7) (β = 0.78, t = 6.72, p = 0.000). Motivation has a positive effect on entrepreneurship capabilities (H3) and barrier has a negative effect on performance (H4) is not supported from the research.

5. Discussion

This study proposes as a foundation for a conceptual model of women entrepreneurship capabilities and sustainability performance in the food sector for achieving achieve policy recommendation. The results of this study show that family support and motivation have a significantly positive effect on female entrepreneurship capabilities while barrier has a significantly negative effect on women entrepreneurship capabilities. The research finds that family support and motivation have positive and significant effects on sustainability performance while barrier has no significant effect on sustainability performance. Thus, women entrepreneurship capabilities have a positive and significant effect on sustainability performance.

The findings of the study have several implications for women entrepreneurs in the food sector for policy support. The research finds that family support and motivation affect women entrepreneurship capabilities and sustainability performance. Family support includes family organizational support, family moral support and family financial support. Motivation reflects to develop my business capabilities, to be professional independence from my boss, to take on the risks and challenges, to be encouragement of government, to contribute something useful to society and to seek greater recognition. Accordingly, women entrepreneurs in the food sector have higher family support and motivation with high possibility of success. Particularly, women with higher entrepreneurship capabilities have better sustainability performance. Women entrepreneurship capabilities, family support and motivation are important determinant of success in the food sector. In terms of managerial practice, the finding suggests that government or firm should overcome the barrier and stimulate the motivation for the women entrepreneurs. Significantly, government should have policy operations in stimulating the women motivation and enhance the women entrepreneurship capabilities for achieving better performance.

Barrier has a negative effect on women entrepreneurship capabilities including ability to detect business opportunities, ability to act in uncertain environments, ability to solve problems, ability to be leadership, ability to communication and ability to manage are valid, which suggests that barriers including lacking of business training, difficulty in obtaining financing, difficulty in obtaining subsidies, gender discrimination and high level of competition affect the women entrepreneurship capabilities in the food sector. The research results confirm and extend Akehurst, Simarro & Mas-Tur’s (2012) and Carter et al’s (2007) results. These studies claim that barrier has a negative effect on women entrepreneurship capabilities. When women will start new business or implement entrepreneurship plan to overcome the barriers under policy support.

Family support has a positive effect on women entrepreneurship capabilities, which poses that family support has a positive effect on women entrepreneurship capabilities in a different way including family organizational support, family moral and financial support because women and men have different roles in the family (Blau, 1977; Constantinidis et al., 2019; Sierra, 2014). Additionally, the results indicate that women tend to start business have barriers including lacking of business training, difficulty in obtaining financing, difficulty in obtaining subsidies, gender discrimination and high level of competition. Women actively seek family support and overcoming barriers for entrepreneurship. The results indicate that gender equality policies can be working but still are not enough for developing women entrepreneurship abilities.

Women entrepreneurship policy is recommended to provide more business training, offer some finance support or subsidies, give incentives for women entrepreneurs. The policy support also can offer some family financial or non-financial support for women entrepreneurs. Government can be recommended to encourage women entrepreneurs’ motivation to develop some entrepreneurship motivation such as offer some women entrepreneurship training courses, financial support, child care program. The research aims to contribute to analyze women entrepreneurship from a gender perspective for making policy recommendation for women entrepreneurship assistance program. In the sustainable development the policy tool can promote and support women’s entrepreneurship as a means for by contributing decent work and economic growth, creating industry, innovation and infrastructure and guaranteeing responsible consumption and adequate production. The research results is consisted with the previous studies that women entrepreneurship growth is especially high if a government has adequate entrepreneurship assistance program and policy (Contreras-Barraza et al., 2021; Fernández, García-Centeno, & Patier ;2021).

6. Conclusions and Research Limitations

The research fills the research gap for the women entrepreneurship and sustainability performance for examining key successful factors for the women entrepreneurship. The research purpose is to investigate these factors affect women entrepreneurship capabilities and sustainability performance by using SEM analysis. This research employs online and mail survey and obtains 175 women entrepreneur sample. The study finds that family support and motivation have positive effect on women entrepreneurship capabilities and sustainability performance. Barriers have no effect on performance. Hopefully, the research can provide the guidance to contribute to women’s entrepreneurship opportunities for policy support.

Although contributing the existing sustainability literature, this study has several research limitations. First, his study surveys only female entrepreneurs in the food sector in Taiwan, and the findings may be not generalizable to other countries and industries. Further research can test other research constructs of female entrepreneurs in other countries and various industries. Second, the size of the women entrepreneurship sample is small. Further women entrepreneurship research for policy development needs more resources to increase the sample size for various firms or industries. Third, women entrepreneurship may be observed on the long-term strategic behavior to sustainability performance changes over a one-year period, so future research should adopt a longitudinal design to test the causal relationship for women entrepreneurship in the policy support issues. Finally, not at all research variables and construct are measured and conceptualized in the research model, further research should explore the effect of other external and internal factors of women entrepreneurs for policy instrument evaluation.