Gender Gap of Migrant Entrepreneurs In Europe: A Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Analysis

Entrepreneurship is fundamental for economic growth, and govern-mental policies can foster investment and innovation. In this scenario, the role of women and migrants assume greater importance, but they face also more obstacles and barriers. Academic research has rarely focused on the consistency and growth of migrant women entrepreneurs in developed countries such as Europe.This article identifies trends and characteristics of migrant women entrepreneurs in Europe, with the aim to promote gender equality in immigrant entrepreneurship in Europe. Using secondary data, we explore 10 years of entrepreneurship in the 28 countries of the European Union, describing trends in women entrepreneurs and factors that can intervene. The main results demonstrate that, despite European politics in terms of facing gender inequalities, the gender gap in entrepr-eneurship persists and it is related to the geographical distribution and origin of women entrepreneurs (native, European, or non-European). Our findings underline the progressive growth of women in entrepr-eneurship in Europe, mainly of non-European entrepreneurs, and reveal significant differences between countries of destination and areas of investment. Especially non-European entrepreneurs show a will toinvest in rural areas instead of metropolitan or urban ones. Empirical evidence would foster the European Union to strengthen gender policies for entrepreneurial development, with particular attention to migrants. The paper proposes to address the gender gap from a macroeconomic perspective, introducing social policies that brought not only individual benefits but collective ones, overlapping gender bias.