A profile of entrepreneurial families that promote women

The mindset of the entrepreneurial family, that is, how it thinks about talent, abilities, and roles, is the truly decisive factor in promoting female leadership in family businesses. Even more so than the surrounding culture.

This is the central finding of an international study showing that, even in the most patriarchal contexts, women can gain access to fully legitimized leadership roles if the family controlling the firm adopts a specific growth-oriented mindset.

As counterintuitive as it may seem, operating in an egalitarian country is not enough to foster female leadership in family businesses. And conversely, a traditionally patriarchal cultural context does not represent an inevitable condemnation. What makes the difference is the family’s mindset, which can either reinforce or counter prevailing social norms. This result shifts the center of gravity of the debate: from society to the family, from formal rules to the beliefs that guide governance and succession choices.

Beyond ceremonial roles

Over the past twenty years, research on women’s presence in family businesses has made significant progress. It is now clear that when women are actively involved in leadership, the quality of governance improves, as do intergenerational continuity and, in many cases, business performance. However, the literature also highlights a recurring paradox: many women from entrepreneurial families are present in the firm, for example, holding a board position, but are not truly involved.

Studies often refer to ceremonial or symbolic roles: positions devoid of real decision-making power, or functions considered consistent with gender stereotypes, such as communication, human resources, or philanthropy.

To explain these dynamics, research has traditionally focused primarily on macro factors: national culture, the degree of patriarchy, institutions, and gender equality laws. In many non-Western contexts, male primogeniture and traditional social norms make women’s access to leadership particularly difficult. But this explanation is not sufficient. Even in countries with advanced institutional systems and pro-equality norms, women may remain excluded from top roles in family businesses.

This leads to the questions guiding the study:

• Why, within the same cultural and institutional context, do some family businesses promote female leadership while others do not?
• And above all: what role does the family, as a social system, play in creating or blocking these opportunities?

A matter of mindset

The researchers analyzed 23 family businesses in 23 countries across four continents, within the STEP Project Global Consortium, one of the leading international research networks on family enterprises. The sample is highly heterogeneous, comprising firms aged between 12 and 137 years, employing between 30 and 19,000 people, with revenues ranging from $ 2 million to more than $ 800 million, operating in 19 industrial sectors, and spanning six different generations.

The study adopts a qualitative multiple-case methodology, based on 37 in-depth interviews with members of entrepreneurial families in leadership roles. The focus is not on women’s formal presence, but on their active involvement: real, visible, legitimized leadership roles endowed with strategic decision-making power.

The most original theoretical contribution of the research is the application of mindset theory, developed in psychology by Carol Dweck, to the context of family businesses. The researchers distinguish between two opposing models:

• a fixed family mindset, in which abilities are seen as innate and roles as rigid and strongly influenced by gender;
• a growth family mindset, in which skills are developed through education, experience, and effort, regardless of gender or birth order.

The analysis shows that families with a growth mindset foster female leadership through three recurring mechanisms that signal the presence of a growth-oriented mentality:

• meritocracy, with roles assigned based on skills and performance;
• early involvement of daughters in the business, to build skills, identity, and a sense of belonging;
• the presence of female role models, such as founder mothers, co-founders, or recognized leaders, which makes female leadership “imaginable” and legitimate.

Changes that are good for business

According to the study, the family’s mindset can matter more than the national cultural context. In strongly patriarchal countries, families with a growth mindset manage to promote women to top leadership roles. Conversely, in Western and egalitarian contexts, a fixed family mindset can continue to block women’s access to leadership, especially in traditionally male-dominated sectors.

For entrepreneurial families and managers, promoting female leadership is an efficient way of managing family capital, with potentially positive implications for the business. Systematically excluding women means giving up skills, cognitive diversity, and innovative capacity, exposing the firm to competitive risks in the medium to long term.

Consistent with the three indicators of a growth mindset, the paper suggests introducing explicit merit-based criteria into succession and governance processes; involving daughters and young women from the earliest stages of business life; and valuing and making visible female role models, whether internal or external to the family.

For policymakers, the study suggests complementing gender policies with instruments that operate at the family level: family governance programs, succession support pathways, intergenerational coaching, and incentives that encourage the early entry of women into family businesses. Alongside regulations, interventions are needed to help families recognize and overcome their own biases.

Finally, the research opens up new avenues for future study: measuring family mindsets, analyzing their evolution over time, and understanding their interaction with institutions and industrial sectors. In doing so, it shifts the debate on female leadership from what should be to what actually works in family businesses.

Georges Samara, Nupur Pavan Bang, Elisa Conti, Issam Mejri, Andrea Calabrò, Tulsi Jayakumar, Rocio Martinez Jimenez, María-Jesús Hernández-Ortiz, Francisca Panades Zamora. “Mindset matters! The active involvement of women in family businesses: harnessing context through the STEP project.” Journal of Business Research, Volume 205, 2026, 115866. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115866.