From barriers to breakthroughs: Navigating success drivers of women entrepreneurs in China

Despite the adolescence stage, the past 30 years have evidenced the proliferation of mainstream academic research for the most interesting and emerging phenomenon, ‘Women Entrepreneurship’. To further shed light on the above-stated phenomenon, this study aims to explore the success drivers and challenges of women entrepreneurs in the specific context of China. For this, success drivers and challenges are treated as antecedents (independent variables), entrepreneurial innovative behavior and government support as moderating variables, and the success of women entrepreneurs is taken as the outcome (dependent variable). To address the aforementioned research agenda, data were gathered from the women entrepreneurs of SMEs located in China who are successfully running their business for at least 3 years. A total of 260 survey responses (free from missing values) were obtained from specific the sample of women entrepreneurs (showing 67% response rate). SPSS 23.00 was used to test the hypothesis about the direct and indirect association of success drivers, challenges, entrepreneurial innovative behavior, Government support and the success of women entrepreneurs. Results revealed that the specific constructs of success drivers and challenges significantly affect the success of women entrepreneurs. Furthermore, entrepreneurial innovative behavior and Government support have also been proven as statistically significant moderators to strengthen the direct association of specific aforementioned constructs. This study is purely unique in theoretical and practical aspects as it addressed the empirically petite-researched phenomenon ‘women entrepreneurship’ specifically in the context of China. The study expanded the normal inquiry mode by looking into the moderated framework of entrepreneurial innovative behavior and Government support to escalate the success of women entrepreneurs.