You can't be what you can't see: The role of gender in the intergenerational transmission of entrepreneurship

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate how the intergenerational transmission of entrepreneurship varies between sons and daughters, and whether such a process depends on living in a country characterized by a high gender gap. Using the SHARE dataset, we find that the effect on daughters’ entrepreneurial choices of having an entrepreneur as father is lower than the one on sons only in countries with a high gender gap. Moreover, it is just in countries with high gender inequality that the effect of having an entrepreneurial mother is different between sons and daughters, with the impact being positive for daughters only. We also develop an individual-level indicator of gender gap within countries that corroborates our findings, which we interpret as evidence of the presence of a role modeling mechanism. However, we find evidence of convergence across time of the intergenerational transmission process to the gender-independent transfer typical of more gender equal countries.