Growth strategies for female startups: a review of the literature

Despite the increasing significance of women-led startups, there is a noticeable gap in academic literature focusing on how these startups address their growth strategies. The growth and maturation phases are pivotal stages in the lifecycle of start-ups, and gaining insights into how female entrepreneurs tackle these challenges can provide valuable information for policy development, ecosystem support, access to funding, the promotion of gender equality, and the enhancement of entrepreneurial prospects. In this way, the paper aims to answer the following research questions: RQ1. How is research in the literature developing the topic of growth strategies within the female start-up dimension? RQ2. What are the primary foci of the existing literature? RQ3. What are possible future research areas? Therefore, to address these research questions and achieve the goals of this study, we used the Structured Literature Review (SLR) methodology. This work fills the gap in the debate on growth strategies for female-led companies by examining 161 articles published between 2012 and the first months of 2023. The main findings of this study reveal the existence of a large body of literature on entrepreneurship, female leadership, and case studies reflecting stories of women entrepreneurs. However, there is a gap in the research on the growth strategies of female-led startups.