Extending the Boundaries of Women’s Entrepreneurship

Introduction

This special issue of the International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship (IJGE) aims to advance the field by exploring entrepreneurship at the edge—research that challenges traditional boundaries and expands understanding of how gender shapes entrepreneurial access, survival, and growth. We seek papers that examine women’s entrepreneurship across diverse contexts—including geographic, cultural, institutional, and sectoral environments—and that analyze the distinctive characteristics, processes, and trajectories of women-led ventures. Submissions may also address the intersectionality of identity and experience, such as race, class, and education, as well as the experiences of Indigenous women entrepreneurs. Contributions on research-informed teaching, pedagogical innovation, and policy design and transfer are equally welcome. We particularly encourage innovative methods and theoretical contributions that expand conceptual frameworks and inspire future scholarship within the Diana research community, deepening our collective understanding of women’s entrepreneurship as a dynamic, multidimensional, and globally relevant phenomenon.

Accepted papers will focus on women’s entrepreneurship at the edge—pushing beyond traditional, Western-centric perspectives to foreground the lived realities, innovations, and institutional challenges of entrepreneurs. By centering diverse geographies, cultures, and social positions, the issue seeks to uncover how gendered entrepreneurial processes unfold in environments marked by different values, infrastructures, and development paths. Its novelty lies in amplifying underrepresented voices and contexts, questioning universal assumptions about entrepreneurship and success, and encouraging methodological and theoretical approaches that reflect global diversity. In doing so, it broadens the empirical and conceptual boundaries of women’s entrepreneurship research, advancing a more inclusive and contextually grounded understanding of how women create, sustain, and transform ventures worldwide.

Women’s entrepreneurship remains unevenly understood and supported globally, with most research rooted in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) contexts (Shepherd et al., 2025). This narrow focus overlooks how gendered entrepreneurial dynamics unfold across diverse cultural, institutional, and economic environments (Jennings & Brush, 2017; Al Dajani et al., 2015; Brush et al, 2010). Recent global crises—pandemics, climate change, and conflict—have intensified systemic inequities and highlighted the need for inclusive, context-sensitive approaches to enterprise development (WeFi, 2025; OECD, 2021). GEM Women Reports (Elam et al., 2024) reveal persistent gender gaps in participation, funding, and growth across both high- and low-income regions. Scholars increasingly call for decolonizing entrepreneurship research and expanding theory and method beyond Western frameworks (Henry et al., 2023; Welter, 2020). This special issue answers these calls by advancing work that reflects the lived realities of women entrepreneurs operating at the social, economic, institutional, and geographic margins.

List of Topic Areas

• Women's entrepreneurship in and across contexts: global, multi-cultural, geographic, community, family, industrial, sectoral, cultural and institutional
• Women entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial processes: organizing, launching, developing, financing, managing, growing and exiting
• Intersections of individual and social differences for women entrepreneurs: skills, competencies, race, class, ethnicity, socio-cultural, experiences, education
• Pedagogical innovations in teaching women entrepreneurs and women's entrepreneurship
• Women entrepreneurship policies: Requirements and lessons for successful policy transfer

Submission Information

Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Registration and access are available here:

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Author guidelines must be strictly followed. Please see:

Author guidelines

Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to “Please select the issue you are submitting to”.

Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.

Key Dates

Closing date for manuscript submissions: 2 February 2026