From Personal to Collective Powers: Towards Gender Inclusivity in Entrepreneurial Ecosystems

Abstract

Entrepreneurship research increasingly seeks to explain how systemic change towards gender inclusivity unfolds. Drawing on a critical realist case study, we develop a morphogenetic account of how such change becomes possible within entrepreneurial ecosystems through structural and cultural conditioning , social interaction , and structural and cultural elaboration . We show that bonding and bridging function as collective, agential mechanisms through which women and their allies reflexively contest gendered constraints and mobilise resource gatekeepers, thereby enabling shifts in ecosystem norms and practices over time. By doing so, the study bridges women’s entrepreneurship, ecosystem scholarship, and critical realism through a processual explanation of change.