Beyond survival: necessity-based female entrepreneurship as a catalyst for job creation through dual legitimacy

This paper tackles the question of whether necessity-based female entrepreneurship (NBFE) can drive new job creation. Drawing on the institutional logic perspective, we reason female entrepreneurs need to secure legitimacy across both private and business domains to be successful in job creation. Our empirical investigation, based on a sample of 1,890 female entrepreneurs from 20 countries sourced from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) APS 2013 dataset, reveals that NBFE positively predicts new job creation under high legitimacy in the private sphere, and this positive effect will be more positive with high legitimacy in the business sphere. Our theoretical contributions shed new light on the interplay between institutional logic, legitimacy, and entrepreneurship, challenging and expanding the existing conceptions in entrepreneurship literature.