Women’s Entrepreneurship and the Sustainable Development Goals: An Opportunity Nexus - Chapter 3 - Empowering women through culture, creativity, and entrepreneurship for the Sustainable Development Goals

Twenty-five million women entrepreneurs are considered “missing entrepreneurs” and are needed to close the gender gap in entrepreneurship in OECD countries. In the present chapter, we explore how the arts, culture, and creative sectors (characterized by high gender parity) accommodate women entrepreneurs in (Western) Europe. Through three case studies, innovative approaches and sustainable social ambitions within women-led enterprises are highlighted. The chapter theorizes how creative sectors manifest themselves as mediating contexts for the influence of women's entrepreneurship on the SDGs. First, if entrepreneurship attracts more women like in creative sectors, entrepreneurship could contribute to the world's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion ambitions and to Gender Equality (SDG Goal#5). Second, a cultural approach to collective problems, energized by the arts and creativity, may enact an entrepreneurial spirit that identifies human needs and mobilizes resources to tackle SDGs, including Good Health and Well-being (Goal#3), Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure (Goal#9), and Sustainable Cities and Communities (Goal#11).