Significantly different yet alike: male and female early-stage entrepreneurship in three European post-socialist countries

This paper focuses on the differences in male and female early-stage entrepreneurship in three post-communist countries: Slovenia, Croatia and Hungary. Despite sharing a long history of cohabitation, they significantly differ in various aspects of their early-stage entrepreneurial activity. Significant gender differences within each of the three countries have also been found. Other results indicate that lower entrepreneurial awareness also lowers risk aversion among adults in a country. Men are also more likely to perceive and exploit business opportunities than women, but in necessity prompted entrepreneurship the gender is unlikely to be influential. Women are on average also less likely to start with entrepreneurship, but once started, they have on average as high growth aspirations as men.