Institutions and Female Entrepreneurship: The Case of a Family Business in China

In recent years, the body of female entrepreneurship literature has grown significantly across the world, especially in advanced economies. In emerging economies such as China, female entrepreneurship has also grown tremendously, but gender roles for women within the family and business domains typically differ between China and advanced economies. The deeply rooted Confucius culture highly promotes family-centred cultural values, which may induce more complex implications for female entrepreneurs in China as females are expected to prioritise family labour over self-employment. However, such culturally informed devotion to the family may also present an extra layer of motivation for women to contribute to family-owned businesses. In this chapter, we will discuss the challenges that female entrepreneurs typically encounter in the case of a Chinese family business. This chapter aims to enrich the students’ understanding of female entrepreneurship as a contributor to the macroeconomic level and micro-business context; institutional factors shaping female entrepreneurship in a given society; cultural values presenting both opportunities and barriers for female entrepreneurship; and females’ role on both the business and family subsystems.