Research trends and dynamics in women entrepreneurship: a comprehensive bibliometric review

Abstract Entrepreneurship has a great deal of social and economic power, whereas the relationship between entrepreneurship and women is still needed to explore their involvement and real contribution to the economic development. The purpose of the study is to explore the current trends in women entrepreneurship by means of bibliometric analysis. Secondary data on publications by the research scholars entitled on the topic women entrepreneurship are collected and composed from the Scopus database where the publications were limited to the specific period from 2011–2024. Based on the screening process, 817 articles were retrieved and analyzed by using biblioshiny in R studio software. The findings revealed that maximum number of publications (50–60 per cent) emerges from the countries like Sweden and United Kingdom and the most influential contributor toward women entrepreneurship is Ahl, H from Jonkoping University. The results found that maximum number of women-related studies emerge from developed nations than developing nations. The analysis on women entrepreneurship concluded that women participation in the business environment has immense contribution to the economic development. Even though their contribution is comparatively high in the recent years, gender discrimination is still a major factor hindering the growth of the women entrepreneur in many developed and developing nations. Therefore, women education and rural women entrepreneurship has to be stimulated for the successful economic development especially in the rural areas of the developing nations. The findings of the study provide valuable insights for the policy makers to develop specific strategies and provide futuristic directions for the research scholars that could benefit in uplifting the livelihood of women entrepreneurs.