Women entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia: Creative responses to gendered opportunities

Female entrepreneurs in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) experience barriers to their action which require creative strategies to navigate. Despite regulatory efforts to advance female entrepreneurial ventures, sociocultural ascriptions remain and these can be detrimental to women’s business experiences. This chapter explores the exogenous and endogenous circumstances integral to establishing a new venture in Saudi Arabia and the hindrances these can pose to female entrepreneurship. Barriers are identified that frame female entrepreneurial action and their creative responses are highlighted to demonstrate how they can play a crucial role in formulating women’s entrepreneurial identities and their entrepreneurial action. A conceptual framework for future research is outlined that seeks to understand these creative responses

Hidden connections: the link between board gender diversity and corporate social performance

This study examines whether and how female board directors may affect corporate social performance (CSP) by drawing on social role theory and feminist ethics literature. The empirical analysis, based on a sample of 126 firms drawn from the S&P500 group of companies over a five-year period, suggests that board gender diversity (BGD) significantly affects corporate social performance. However, this impact depends on the social performance metric under investigation. In particular, more gender diverse boards exert stronger influence on CSP metrics focusing on ‘negative’ business practices, such as the ‘concerns’ dimension of the Kinder Lydenberg Domini, Inc. (KLD) ratings . This is because such CSP ratings have the potential to induce higher levels of ‘empathic caring’, which strongly appeals to female directors. Hence, this study reveals further hidden connections in the BGD-CSP link which have important implications for managers, nongovernmental organisations and socially responsible investors