Document Type
Article
Publication Date
April 2020
Journal
Collectif
Issue
2020
Abstract
This paper provides a case study of two female-onlyentrepreneurship education programs designed by faculty from BresciaUniversity College, Canada’s only women’s university, located in London,Ontario, Canada. The programs were designed to address the substantialgender gap found in women’s participation in entrepreneurial activities byinspiring, educating, and exposing program participants to entrepreneurialendeavours. One program was a one-day conference and the other wasa one-week boot camp. The study was designed to better understand howto strengthen the female entrepreneurial pipeline by measuring changesin entrepreneurial knowledge, entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE), andentrepreneurial intentions (EI). Program participants were asked to completepre- and post-experience questionnaires where information aboutleadership experiences, role models, entrepreneurial knowledge, ESE, andEI was collected. The results of the analysis reveal that the gender-specificprogramming increased ESE in the one-week camp and that both programssignificantly increased both objective and self-perceived knowledge ofentrepreneurship. The authors conclude that the female-only educationalinterventions helped to transform adolescent girls’ sense of entrepreneurialpossibilities. We recommend a scaffolded and integrated approach to futureentrepreneurship education programming to address and ultimately closethe entrepreneurship gender gap.
