social capital of entrepreneurs in male and female dominated job sectors

in value creation process via finding and exploiting opportunities, entrepreneurs have to create and use social networks to gain access to resources and information and benefit from their social capital. the entrepreneurs’ activities, contacts and performance can influence the social capital of a society. this research reviews the previous research regarding the effect of sex segregation on social capital and focuses on the sexsegregation’s effect on the social capital level of entrepreneurs. this article assumes social capital based on four dimensions: social trust, social cohesion, social participation and social networks. the population of this research consists of the participants of ‘top entrepreneurs festival (2010)’ held by the ministry of labour. the research is a qualitative survey and is conducted using a questionnaire. the multiple regression analysis has been used for continuous variables and the chi-square method is applied for discrete variables. the results of this research indicate that female entrepreneurs have the highest level of social capital in female dominated jobs compared with other groups, while male and female entrepreneurs have the lowest level of social capital in male dominated jobs. these results can help policymakers and executives with developing useful and effective social capital and can help entrepreneurs with selecting the fields with higher social capital and more appropriate performance.