Female Founders and Their Status in Entrepreneurial Groups

Isabell Stamm, Bettina Müller, and Steffen Elferich

This sociological research project understands entrepreneurship as collective action and draws attention to entrepreneurial groups as key social units involved in this collective action. Entrepreneurial groups are constituted by a small number of family members, friends, or former colleagues that jointly engage in an entrepreneurial venture. They share a history, develop a distinct idioculture, and draft an image of their joint future. The research project investigates the status of female founders within entrepreneurial groups. The empirical basis is a random sample drawn from all new business entries in the commercial register for the years 2007, 2012, 2017, and 2021 (N=10,000), which reveals that women have a significantly lower status in entrepreneurial groups than male founders. This lower status is evident with regard to the function assigned in the business and the size of shares held as well as the combination of these dimensions. The research contributes to a sociological perspective on business founding and confirms that women are not only less frequently involved in business founding but also have lower status when they do participate. It builds on previous research conducted in the Entrepreneurial Group Dynamics Research Group funded by the Volkswagen Foundation and located at the Technical University in Berlin from 2017 to 2021 and is enabled by an ongoing collaboration with the Institute for Research on the Mittelstand at the University of Mannheim.