Women’s Entrepreneurship in Multi-Level Contexts: A Review and Research Agenda

Persistent and multifaceted gender differences in entrepreneurship, alongside the heterogeneous landscape of women’s entrepreneurial activity worldwide, have attracted increasing scholarly attention. As this body of research has expanded substantially, a comprehensive synthesis is both timely and necessary. To address this need, we adopt an integrative review approach, analyzing 458 studies published in journals ranked 3 to 4* in the 2024 ABS Academic Journal Guide between 1998 and 2025. Drawing on a three-level contextual model, we situate women’s entrepreneurship within institutional (macro), socio-relational (meso), and individual (micro) contexts. We distill four overarching theoretical themes that structure current scholarship: (1) normative and cognitive mechanisms underlying gendered outcomes; (2) tangible structures shaping gendered entrepreneurship; (3) social-relational contexts bridging macro- to micro-level contexts; and (4) women entrepreneurs as agents of contextual change. Within each theme, we synthesize key mechanisms, compare theoretical perspectives, and identify avenues for future research. Our review makes three contributions: first, we advance women’s entrepreneurship research with a framework that captures the multiplicity and interaction of overlapping institutional, socio-relational, and individual contexts in which women’s entrepreneurship is embedded; second, we highlight the multi-level nature of contexts, particularly the mediating role of meso-level socio-relational dynamics between macro-level institutions and micro-level outcomes; third, we position women entrepreneurs as active agents who collectively reshape the meso- and macro-level contexts.