Does an Entrepreneur’s Gender Matter for Credibility and Financing of SMEs?

Abstract

The importance of entrepreneur credibility, that is, a sense of belief or trust in the individual’s ability to fulfil the entrepreneurial role and create and sustain a viable venture, as perceived by key stakeholders, is attracting increasing attention within contemporary entrepreneurship literature (Tornikoski and Newbert, 2007; Wry et al., 2011). Current literature emphasises the masculine discourse, which informs the idea of the contemporary entrepreneur (Ahl, 2006). As such, women business owners/managers may potentially be disadvantaged by their gender, which devalues the entrepreneurial integrity from the perspective of key stakeholders. Women lack business credibility in the eyes of employees, customers, suppliers and financial institutions (Baines et al., 2003; Belle and La Valle, 2003; Marlow et al., 2008). It has been suggested that it is more difficult for women to raise start-up and growth finance (Coleman, 2000; SBA report, 2013) as well as establish their credibility (Marlow et al., 2008; Freel et al., 2012) when dealing with banks in particular.