Women Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Development: Bibliometric Analysis and Emerging Research Trends

Women entrepreneurship has attracted the attention of academics and practitioners with a large body of research studies in recent years. Past literature reviews on women entrepreneurship have been criticized for their limited scope, lack of interdisciplinary perspective, and the need for more objective, technology-facilitated analytical methods. Our study provides insights into the development of women entrepreneurship research, including a new analysis through the lens of sustainable development and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Bibliometric indicators and a systematic literature review approach are used to analyze literature published between 1991 and 2021 to better map the development of research and related opportunities for enhancing studies on women entrepreneurship. In addition to traditional bibliometric indicators such as publications, citations, etc., we used altmetrics, a new metric to assess the engagement and impact of publications based on social media presence. The Dimensions database has been used to assemble and arrange 3157 publications on women entrepreneurship, of which 843 publications are directly aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and 80 publications related to COVID-19. Our findings indicate that the top three SDG of interest to researchers are: SDG 8, decent work and economic growth; SDG 10, reducing inequalities; and SDG 5, gender equality. Within each SDG, we find concentrated studies on themes relating to the socio-political and small-medium enterprises, including family business management and gender biases, and their implications for sustainable development. Further, studies on the impact of COVID-19 reveal a significant bias towards women’s empowerment in ICT, digitization, and e-commerce while exposing the need for gender-moderated policies and governmental interventions. We offer suggestions for future studies on enabling and measuring the contributions of women’s entrepreneurship to sustainable development, including capital investments and the long-term impacts of the pandemic on women-led enterprises.