Abstract
Given that skill variety is widely regarded a key component of entrepreneurial human capital, gender differences in entrepreneurship could be rooted in the formation of such skill variety. Analyzing 12-year longitudinal data following 1,321 Finnish adolescents into adulthood, we study whether gender differences in skill variety open up early in the vocational development of entrepreneurs vs. non-entrepreneurs, thereby contributing to the persisting gender gap in entrepreneurship in adulthood. Specifically, structural equation modeling was used to test and compare the mediating effect of early skill variety in adolescence vs. education- and work-related skill variety in early adulthood on the gender gap in entrepreneurial intentions in adulthood. We find that education- and work-related skill variety indeed operate as an obstacle for women entrepreneurship, despite women outperforming men in early skill variety in adolescence. Hence, we identify a critical turning point in early adulthood where women fall behind in their development of entrepreneurial human capital.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e0270976 |
| Journal | PLoS ONE |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue number | 7 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jul 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Financial support was received by the Jacobs Foundation (2013-1069). These funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright: © 2022 Krieger et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
