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An entrepreneurship education and peer mentoring program for women in STEM: mentors’ experiences and perceptions of entrepreneurial self-efficacy and intent

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Abstract

Women are underrepresented in STEM and in entrepreneurship but are rare in STEM entrepreneurship. A gender-sensitive entrepreneurship education and peer mentoring program for women engineering and computer science students was developed to provide classroom instruction, experiential learning, and support to a small group of students. This paper reports on the experiences of student peer mentors in the program, in terms of entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) and entrepreneurial intent (EI). Qualitative methods were adopted for this study. Student mentors were interviewed about their experiences and reported increased perceptions of entrepreneurial self-efficacy, a greater awareness of diversity and gender issues, and a changed perspective on problem solving and life in general. Student mentors reported a distinct interest in becoming an entrepreneur at “some time” in their lives, although not necessarily immediately upon graduation.

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Notes

  1. As of 2008, women outnumber men overall in undergraduate programs in Canadian universities, representing 57.4% (Statistics Canada 2008/9).

  2. Globally, women entrepreneurs continue to dominate the services sector - government, health, education and social services, where businesses tend to be smaller, less growth-oriented, and less profitable (GEM, Kelley et al. 2017).

  3. Subjective norm refers to the perceived social pressure to perform or not perform the behavior (Ajzen 1988, 1991).

  4. Note that this finding aligns with the Kolvereid’s (1997) findings and the TPB that suggests that gender has an indirect effect on intent (through ESE, perceived attitudes and social norms).

  5. Refer to McGee et al. (2009) for an excellent discussion of ESE and its measurement; and Thompson (2009) and Valliere (2015) for a comprehensive overview of EI measurement, interpretations, and development of these constructs). We did collect quantitative (questionnaire) data, (pre and post program), with the intention to develop a large enough sample size, over time, to support statistical analyses (i.e., acceptable statistical power). We used scales developed by McGee et al. (2009) for ESE and Kolvereid (1996) for EI. For more information, please contact the first or second authors.

  6. We recognize that the cross-cutting themes do not strictly measure the construct of ESE (as defined by several authors (see Footnote 5), measured through questionnaires and statistically validated); however, they capture the essence of the concept: the participants’ confidence in successfully performing entrepreneurial tasks. We have therefore retained the use of this terminology.

  7. For example, during the two years of the program, the number of women winning 1st, 2nd or 3rd prize in the competitions increased from 0% (2013–2015) to 27% women (2015–2017). A third of these winning women were involved in WSN. For more details, please contact the authors.

  8. The objectives of the program were: to develop an entrepreneurial mindset and competencies, entrepreneurial self-efficacy (a belief in one’s ability to be a successful entrepreneur), and a community of women engineers in entrepreneurship.

  9. This identifies the faculty in which the entrepreneurship education was “rooted”. The second most common was the engineering faculty at 15%.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Siddharth Khalia for his contributions to the data collection and literature review. We thank Rubina Lakhani for conducting the course and overseeing the mentoring program in Year 2. This program was partially funded by the University of Ottawa. The research was partially funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Chair for Women in Science and Engineering at the University of Ottawa.

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Elliott, C., Mavriplis, C. & Anis, H. An entrepreneurship education and peer mentoring program for women in STEM: mentors’ experiences and perceptions of entrepreneurial self-efficacy and intent. Int Entrep Manag J 16, 43–67 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11365-019-00624-2

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