Fear of Failure as a Gendered Barrier to Building Sustainable Entrepreneurial Ecosystems

Journal article

Drawing on four well‐established theoretical perspectives, this paper proposes an intersectional, emotionally grounded framework for understanding how gender and age jointly shape entrepreneurial perceptions across psychological, social, and cultural domains. Using 2024 Italian Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data and ordinal logistic regression, we find that women are approximately 30% more likely to report fear of failure and 20% less likely to feel self‐efficacious, despite perceiving high social respect for entrepreneurs. These emotional constraints persist across age, suggesting that gendered affective barriers are stable over time. We also demonstrate that composite indices, commonly used in entrepreneurial research, partially obscure gendered nuances that are better revealed through disaggregated analysis. This study contributes to entrepreneurship theory by integrating emotional risk into socially embedded models of entrepreneurial cognition. By addressing gendered emotional barriers, we contribute to building more socially sustainable and resilient entrepreneurial ecosystems, in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We further frame these barriers as strategic obstacles to environmentally responsible entrepreneurship, underscoring their relevance to SDGs 5, 8, 9, and 12. Finally, we highlight managerial implications: Incubators, accelerators, and firms should design gender‐sensitive interventions, such as inclusive training, mentorship, and financial instruments, to foster innovation, responsible production, and the resilience of entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Authors: Sica, G; Spiniello, C; Micozzi, A; Palazzo, M

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Wiley
• Journal: Business Strategy and the Environment
• Publication date: 2025-11-25
• Acceptance date: 2025-11-12
• DOI: 10.1002/bse.70421
• EISSN: 1099-0836
• ISSN: 0964-4733
• Language: English
• Keywords: fear of failure; social sustainability; gender and entrepreneurship; sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems; Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM)