Gender Differences in Human Capital and Personality Traits as Drivers of Gender Gap in Entrepreneurship: Empirical Evidence from Nigeria

Female entrepreneurs are important for economic progress and have an important contribution to employment creation and GDP. They also have value through increasing entrepreneurial diversity. In addition to the growing number of female entrepreneurs across the globe in the last few decades there has been an increase in the number of studies on female entrepreneurship.

Aims: This study (i) examines different human, financial and social capital related factors that may determine the success of women entrepreneurship (ii) find out if there are relationships between personality traits like locus of control, achievement motivation, creativity, risk propensity and entrepreneurial success.

Study design: A survey design was adopted for study.

Place and duration of study: Department of industrial relations and public administration Lagos State University, Lagos Nigeria, between July and September 2012.

Methodology: A field survey of 200 entrepreneurs of the 1062 registered entrepreneurs randomly selected across six local government areas of Lagos.

Results: Response rate was 180 (90%) consisting of 102 (57%) men and 78 (43%) women. The rate of women's entrepreneurship is lower than that of men. Six hypotheses were tested using x2 at 0.05 level of significance and df 4. X2 (cal.) 33.94 indicates significant gender differences in control orientation. X2 of 56.37implies a significant difference in male and female level of competitiveness. X2 (cal.) 2.71, implies no significant difference in male and female in the level of achievement motivation. X2 (cal.) 61.16, implies a significant difference between male and female in risk propensity. X2 (cal.) 12.62, shows a significant difference in the level of human capital. X2 (cal.) 51.28 indicates gender differences in social capital.

Conclusion: The study posits that gender differences in competitiveness and some other personality traits is due to nature, nurture or a combination of both. The similarities between successful entrepreneurs of both genders imply that under the same conditions both can be successful entrepreneurs. Intervention efforts should focus on encouragement, technical, social and financial support, capacity building, experience, and well-developed professional networks for women entrepreneurs both to improve their numbers and to increase the success rates for existing ones.