Does persistence make you healthy? An empirical study on female entrepreneurs from China

BACKGROUND: Nowadays, more and more women are engaging in entrepreneurial activities. Meanwhile, female entrepreneurs’ health problems have been increasingly reported worldwide. What factors would influence female entrepreneurs’ health are the subject of this paper. METHODS: This paper focuses on the effects of entrepreneurial experience and age of firm on female entrepreneurs’ health through the analysis of 2 years of tracking data in the Bohai Economic Rim, which is one of the most developed areas for entrepreneurial activities in China. RESULTS: Results from the samples of female entrepreneurs demonstrate that increasing entrepreneurial experience and growing firm age could help female entrepreneurs to activate multiple positive identities. These identities can help female entrepreneurs cope with gender stereotype threat and maintain good health. CONCLUSION: This paper contributes to entrepreneur health research in two aspects. First, this study focused on entrepreneurial history indexed by entrepreneurial experience and firm age, enriching the field of female entrepreneurship. Second, this study further explored the mechanism that women cope with stereotype threat in the context of entrepreneurship. At the same time, this paper addresses ways that policy-makers and social media are responsible to help female entrepreneurs stay healthy. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12905-021-01471-6.