Effect of gender on entrepreneurial tendency, entrepreneurial motivation and entrepreneurial characteristics: A research on university students

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of gender on entrepreneurial tendency, entrepreneurial motivation and entrepreneurial characteristics. Within the scope of this research, first of all, a literature review was conducted in which the concept of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial tendency, motivations underlying entrepreneurship and the common characteristics of entrepreneurs were examined. Following this, a questionnaire was prepared in the light of the findings obtained from the literature review and applied with university students. The universe of the research is university students in Turkey. With a 99% confidence rate and a 5% margin of error, the number of samples to be targeted was determined as 666. Since male and female university students will be compared within the scope of this research, the numbers of men and women have been kept equal. In this sense, within the scope of the research, 666 students were targeted and surveys were conducted in such a way that 333 of these students were female and 333 were male. According to the results, the sub-dimension with the lowest value in entrepreneurship motivation was "individualistic focus", and the subdimension with the highest value was "economic focus". In the scale of entrepreneurial personality traits, the "locus of control" sub-dimension had the lowest value and the "need for achievement" sub-dimension had the highest average value. In the entrepreneurship tendency scale, the average value is high. It was found that there is a statistically significant difference between the gender variable and the mean scores of entrepreneurship tendency. According to the results, the mean score of entrepreneurship tendency of male students was higher than that of female students. It was understood that there was a statistically significant difference between the gender variable and the mean scores of "economic focus", "social focus" and "study focus", which are sub-dimensions of entrepreneurship motivation. According to the results, it was understood that the economic, social and work motivations of male students were higher than female students. It was found that there was a statistically significant difference between the gender variable and the mean scores of the sub-dimensions of entrepreneurial personality traits such as "propensity to take risks", "need for achievement", "locus of control" and "tolerance of uncertainty". According to the results, it was determined that male students' tendency to take risks and their achievement needs were higher than female students. It was also understood that male students' tolerance to uncertainty scores were higher than female students. It was observed that the control scores of female students were higher than that of males. Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Tendency, Entrepreneurial Personality Traits, Entrepreneurship Motivations, Female Entrepreneur