What’ s new in female entrepreneurship research? Answers from the literature Sara Poggesi 1 & Michela Mari 1 & Luisa De Vita 2 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015 Abstract Female entrepreneurship to date represents a key component of the busi- ness sector worldwide as, in 2012 more than 187 million out of 400 million entrepreneurs were women (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2013). In academia the gender factor in entrepreneurship emerged in the late 1970s Schwartz (Journal of Contemporary Business, 5(1), 47–76, 1976) and especially since the beginning of the new millennium a substantial growth in the investigation of this topic has been registered. Thus, the time has come to systematize the academic progress on this issue and to reflect on future research directions in order to gain deeper insights into the female entrepreneurship domain. In this vein, our paper aims to enrich the conversa- tion on female entrepreneurship by reviewing 248 papers published in the last 14 years. In doing so, we identify and analyze the new insights that have emerged in the literature from both a managerial and a sociological perspective, thus responding to the numerous calls for a more interdisciplinary approach to the study of this topic. Keywords Entrepreneurship . Female entrepreneurship . Women entrepreneurs . Review Int Entrep Manag J DOI 10.1007/s11365-015-0364-5 * Michela Mari michela.mari@uniroma2.it Sara Poggesi sara.poggesi@uniroma2.it Luisa De Vita luisa.devita@uniroma1.it 1 School of Economics, Tor Vergata University of Rome, Via Columbia, 2, 00133 Rome, Italy 2 Faculty of Political Science, Sociology, Communication, Sapienza University of Rome, Via Salaria, 113, 00198 Rome, Italy