Abstract
Entrepreneurship research increasingly seeks to explain how systemic change towards gender inclusivity unfolds. Drawing on a critical realist case study, we develop a morphogenetic account of how such change becomes possible within entrepreneurial ecosystems through structural and cultural conditioning, social interaction, and structural and cultural elaboration. We show that bonding and bridging function as collective, agential mechanisms through which women and their allies reflexively contest gendered constraints and mobilise resource gatekeepers, thereby enabling shifts in ecosystem norms and practices over time. By doing so, the study bridges women’s entrepreneurship, ecosystem scholarship, and critical realism through a processual explanation of change.
Keywords
Introduction
Efforts to address gender inclusivity in entrepreneurship have long focused on ‘fixing the women’ (Neergaard, 2021). These approaches, rooted in neoliberal and postfeminist approaches (Gill, 2017; Lewis et al., 2014), emphasise individual responsibility, encouraging women to invest in themselves, adopt the right mindset, and overcome barriers through self-improvement (Ahl & Marlow, 2021; Marlow & McAdam, 2013; Meliou & Ozbilgin, 2024). As a result, women are often portrayed as deficient entrepreneurial actors who require special training, confidence-building, or exclusive networking spaces to succeed (Berglund et al., 2018; Harrison et al., 2020, 2024; McAdam et al., 2019). However, these interventions rarely challenge the entrepreneurial norms that systematically privilege masculine ideals (Marlow & McAdam, 2015), nor do they alter the structures that shape access, legitimacy, and opportunity in entrepreneurship (Ahl & Marlow, 2021; Brush et al., 2019). Rather than dismantling systemic barriers, they tend to reproduce them (Harrison et al., 2020, 2024), placing the burden of change on individual women (Villeséche et al., 2022) while obscuring the broader contexts in which exclusion persists (Arshed et al., 2023; de Bruin & Swail, 2025).
In contrast, recent feminist scholarship has called for ‘fixing the system’ (de Bruin & Swail, 2025; Reyes & Neergaard, 2023), redirecting focus from individualised interventions to the structural and cultural conditions that define both the boundaries of participation and the pathways through which entrepreneurship is pursued (Ahl & Marlow, 2021; Harrison et al., 2024; Bakker & McMullen, 2023). The entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) offers a suitable lens for this shift because EEs comprise interdependent actors, such as entrepreneurs, incubators/accelerators, venture capital firms (VCs), government agencies, and other intermediaries (Stam & Van de Ven, 2021), whose interactions shape and govern the support for entrepreneurship (Spigel, 2017; Wurth et al., 2022). As sites where norms, values, and power relations are enacted and contested (Adner, 2017; DeJordy et al., 2020), EEs function as architectures for collective action (Williams & Fathallah, 2024). They enable diverse actors to mobilise towards broader societal goals (Spanuth & Urbano, 2025). Examining how actors navigate and challenge gendered constraints within an EE allows us to observe the forms of systemic change that feminist scholars argue are needed to move beyond neoliberal and postfeminist approaches (Meliou & Ozbilgin, 2024) towards collective empowerment and structural transformation (Ahl & Marlow, 2021; Villeséche et al., 2022). We therefore ask: (a) How do diverse actors engage with gendered constraints? and (b) How does systemic change towards gender inclusivity take shape within an EE?
To answer these questions, we turn to critical realism (Archer, 1995, 2003), which provides a lens for analysing how structures both constrain and enable collective mobilisation, and how systemic change unfolds over time. Drawing on Archer’s morphogenetic approach, we trace how gendered constraints are reproduced or transformed through three interlinked phases: structural and cultural conditioning (T1), social mobilisation (T2–T3), and structural and cultural elaboration (T4). This lens allows us to move beyond surface-level accounts of inclusion and capture deeper processes of change.
We conduct a critical realist case study (Easton, 2010; Vincent & Wapshott, 2014) of Tel Aviv, one of the most established EEs (Senor & Singer, 2011). Our interest in the case emerged inductively, as we observed tensions between celebrations of women’s entrepreneurship and persistent exclusion in the EE. Despite growing attention to gender inclusivity, Tel Aviv remains embedded in patriarchal structures that shape access to entrepreneurial resources, raising questions about how systemic change is possible under such conditions. Through 55 interviews and extensive secondary data analysis, we traced how women entrepreneurs, angel investors, VCs, incubators/accelerators, government agencies, and other actors engaged with gendered constraints.
Our contribution to the field is threefold. Firstly, we advance research on women’s entrepreneurship (Arshed et al., 2023; Meliou & Ozbilgin, 2024), showing how women’s bonding and bridging function as collective, agential mechanisms through which they contest structural and cultural constraints, and lay the foundations for broader mobilisation. Secondly, we extend scholarship on inclusive EEs (Bakker & McMullen, 2023; de Bruin & Swail, 2025) by developing a morphogenetic framework to explain how systemic change towards gender inclusivity takes shape, unfolding through phases of structural and cultural conditioning, sociocultural mobilisation, and structural and cultural elaboration (Archer, 1995). Thirdly, we contribute to critical realist work in organisation and management studies (Delbridge & Edwards, 2013; Tuominen & Lehtonen, 2018) by demonstrating how systemic change can be tracked empirically, revealing how tensions, reflexivity, and signals of morphogenetic potential activate generative mechanisms that drive structural and cultural elaboration over time. Together, these insights inform policy, advocating for ‘fixing the system’ rather than ‘fixing the women’.
Theoretical Background
Gender and Entrepreneurship
Neoliberalism, characterised by the promotion of moral and cultural values such as risk-taking, self-reliance, and personal responsibility while minimising state intervention (Gill, 2017), has fostered an environment in which entrepreneurship is not only encouraged but also socially valued (Lewis et al., 2014). Neoliberalism has extended its influence into analyses of women’s societal status and roles (Ahl & Marlow, 2021), contributing to what has been termed a ‘postfeminist era’ (Rottenberg, 2014). Postfeminism expects women to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset, start businesses, compete in the marketplace, and contribute to economic development on equal terms with men (Berglund et al., 2018; Marlow & McAdam, 2013). This narrative is reinforced through media portrayals of women entrepreneurs as ‘superwomen’ (Byrne et al., 2019, p. 154) who ‘can have it all’ (Sullivan & Delaney, 2017, p. 837), with their success depicted as a matter of personal effort and choice (Byrne & Giuliani, 2025; Nadin et al., 2020). In this way, women are transformed into ‘self-investing capital’ (Rottenberg, 2014, p. 159), encouraged to pursue entrepreneurship as a means of emancipation (Meliou & Ozbilgin, 2024). This emphasis on individualism suggests that women can achieve success by negotiating constraints on their own rather than through systemic change (Ahl & Marlow, 2021).
Neoliberalism has also influenced entrepreneurship policy by framing the field as gender-neutral and meritocratic. Women who do not overcome barriers and conform to the stereotype of the ‘normative technology entrepreneur’ (Marlow & McAdam, 2015, p. 1) are often labelled as failed or reluctant actors (Byrne & Giuliani, 2025). This framing legitimises policy interventions aimed at ‘fixing’ them (Berglund et al., 2018) and at levelling the playing field (McAdam et al., 2019). Consequently, typical measures, such as training and coaching (Ahl & Marlow, 2021), business incubation (Callerstig et al., 2024; Marlow & McAdam, 2015; Reyes & Neergaard, 2023), or women-only networks (Arshed et al., 2023), risk reinforcing exclusion. For instance, women-only networks can confine women to low-growth, service-sector ‘pink ghettos’ (Harrison et al., 2024, p. 232), reproducing rather than dismantling gendered niches (Harrison et al., 2020). Such networks may also contribute to the stigmatisation of women entrepreneurs, as they often lack access to resources circulating in mixed-gender networks (McAdam et al., 2019).
Empirical evidence indicates that women entrepreneurs continue to face limited access to financial capital, weaker networks, and inadequate welfare support (GEM, 2023). They also navigate higher, gendered thresholds of legitimacy in both investment (Balachandra et al., 2019) and incubation settings (Marlow & McAdam, 2015; Reyes & Neergaard, 2023). These barriers operate through subtle mechanisms (Meliou & Ozbilgin, 2024), embedded in formal institutional structures that routinely privilege men (Shahriar, 2018). They are further reinforced by societal norms and cultural beliefs that valorise ‘masculinity’ over ‘femininity’ (Stroila & Shi, 2025; Swail & Marlow, 2018). Such forms of patriarchal authority contribute to negative outcomes for women entrepreneurs (Acker, 1990), including lower growth expectations, higher exit rates, and reduced internationalisation (Lassalle & Shaw, 2021).
Responsibility for overcoming these inequalities should not rest solely on individual women entrepreneurs (Ahl & Marlow, 2021). Instead, it requires confronting and dismantling the systemic barriers that undermine gender inclusivity in entrepreneurship (Brush et al., 2019). To emphasise the shift from interventions that target women individually to approaches that address systemic barriers (de Bruin & Swail, 2025), we turn to the concept of EEs (Wurth et al., 2022). As Williams and Fathallah (2024, p. 3) argued, EEs involve ‘organising at the nexus of entrepreneurship and social movements’, providing an architecture for collective action in pursuit of systemic change (Thompson et al., 2018).
Entrepreneurial Ecosystems as Architectures for Collective Action
While much of the EE literature has focused on their role in fostering innovation and economic development (cf. Wurth et al., 2022), more recent scholarship points to their potential to support broader societal outcomes, including community resilience (Williams & Fathallah, 2024) and social well-being (Hakanen et al., 2025). These insights have prompted scholars to conceptualise EEs as sites where coordination and collaboration emerge among actors united by a shared societal purpose (Hakanen et al., 2025; Thompson et al., 2018). EEs are, therefore, not only networks of actors but also structures that can ‘sustain, resource, and even reshape larger transformative social change efforts’ (DeJordy et al., 2020, p. 931). In this view, EEs provide the necessary scaffolding for change to occur (Adner, 2017), as actors engage in collective action by mobilising resources, building trust and legitimacy, and negotiating meanings to address shared challenges (Drori et al., 2025). Collective action, as opposed to isolated individual efforts, is more effective in addressing complex, systemic issues (Drori et al.,2025; Spanuth & Urbano, 2025), particularly those embedded in entrenched social structures (Bridoux & Stoelhorst, 2022). Such mobilisation enables shared responsibility (Spanuth & Urbano, 2025), coordinated influence (Hakanen et al., 2025), and brings together diverse forms of power and knowledge (DeJordy et al., 2020).
Yet how collective action and systemic change unfold within an EE towards gender inclusivity remains underexplored. Understanding these dynamics requires an approach that accounts for the enabling and constraining roles of structures and the ways actors reflect upon and work to reshape them. Critical realism provides such a framework, offering a theorisation of the structure-agency relationship that makes visible the temporal processes through which change emerges.
Systemic Change from a Critical Realist Perspective
Critical realism provides a framework for examining systemic change through the ‘dualism of structure and agency’ (Bhaskar, 2010). While structure and agency are interdependent, treating them as ‘separate and related entities’ (Sayer, 2000, p. 18) avoids conflation. This position contrasts with Giddens’s (1984) structuration theory, whose notion of the ‘duality of structure’ can blur the analytical distinction necessary to trace how pre-existing structures condition and are, in turn, reshaped by actors’ agency over time (Archer, 2010).
Archer’s morphogenetic approach conceptualises change as a cyclical process comprising three analytically distinct temporal phases. In phase 1 (T1), structural and cultural conditioning shape the contexts in which actors operate, defining the opportunities and constraints they encounter. In phase 2 (T2–T3), actors engage in social interaction guided by reflexivity, defined as the ‘power to deliberate internally upon what to do in situations that were not of our making’ (Archer, 2003, p. 342). Rather than being passive recipients of conditioning, actors reflect on their positions, assess their contexts, and make decisions informed by lived experience (Tuominen & Lehtonen, 2018). These internal deliberations precede and shape collective action, mediating the influence of structure on agency (Archer, 1995). In phase 3 (T4), social interaction leads either to structural and cultural elaboration (i.e. morphogenesis) or reproduction (i.e. morphostasis). The end of one cycle sets the conditions for the next, as the outcomes of elaboration feedback into a new round of conditioning and interaction.
While Archer’s morphogenetic approach (1995) focuses primarily on structural and cultural elaboration at T4, more recent work emphasises the importance of attending to signals of morphogenetic potential across the morphogenetic phases (Newman, 2020). These signals represent early indicators that change may be emerging, reflected in shifting meaning-making, emerging reflexivity, or visible tensions that challenge established norms (Delbridge & Edwards, 2013; Herepath, 2014). For example, discourse, narratives, and symbolic action may function as precursors of cultural and structural elaboration (Bhaskar, 2010; Danermark et al., 2002). Attending to such dynamics enables researchers to trace how ideational cracks and practical experimentation may prefigure broader systemic change, even when social and cultural conditioning persists (Archer, 2024).
Compared with dominant theories of change that emphasise actors’ agential efforts in shaping structures (e.g. structuration theory, Giddens, 1984; institutional work, Lawrence et al., 2011), critical realism offers four distinct contributions. Firstly, it avoids conflating structure and agency by treating agency as emergent and unevenly distributed, shaped by actors’ social positioning and reflexive engagement (Leca & Naccache, 2006). Secondly, it provides ‘a meta-theoretical framing of the interplay between structures and actors that unfolds over time’ (Frederiksen & Kringelum, 2021, p. 24). Thirdly, rather than assuming change requires actors who are disembedded from structures (e.g. Lawrence et al., 2011), critical realism addresses the ‘paradox of embedded agency’ (Delbridge & Edwards, 2013) by showing how individuals work within, against, and through constraints (Leca & Naccache, 2006). Fourthly, critical realism offers a stratified ontology that distinguishes between the empirical (what is experienced), the actual (what occurs), and the real (the causal powers and liabilities that generate change) (Sayer, 2000). This ontological depth allows researchers to engage with generative mechanisms that shape change (Frederiksen & Kringelum, 2021) in complex contexts with multiple layers of structure (Delbridge & Edwards, 2013; Herepath, 2014; Tuominen & Lehtonen, 2018). Identifying and describing mechanisms is the core contribution of building critical realist theory.
Archer’s approach has been applied in management and organisational studies to examine reflexive mobilisation and bargaining power (Tuominen & Lehtonen, 2018), navigation of organisational complexity (Delbridge & Edwards, 2013), and strategy formation (Herepath, 2014). In entrepreneurship, it has informed work on motivation and entry pathways (Wimalasena et al., 2021) and women’s identity work aimed at challenging gender norms (Boddington, 2024). These studies collectively show that change arises from actors’ evolving reflexive capacities to reshape their contexts (Archer, 2003). Building on this theoretical framing, we now turn to our methodological approach.
Methodology
In this study, we adopted a critical realist case design (Ackroyd & Karlsson, 2014; Easton, 2010), well suited to investigating complex, temporal phenomena situated in multiple layers of structure (Vincent & Wapshott, 2014). The design enables the integration of intensive (e.g. interviews) and extensive (e.g. archival material) forms of data (Fletcher, 2017). Our analytical strategy combines abstraction (i.e. reconceptualising empirical patterns through Archer’s morphogenetic approach) with retroduction, asking what causal powers, liabilities, and generative mechanisms could plausibly account for observed events (Danermark et al., 2002). This approach aligns with the critical realist logic of inquiry, reflecting a process of ‘theorising through surprises’ (Timmermans & Tavory, 2012, p. 174), in which ‘theoretical framework, empirical fieldwork, and case analysis evolve simultaneously’ (Dubois & Gadde, 2002, p. 553).
Adopting a critical realist lens enables us to examine how diverse actors engage with gendered constraints and how systemic change unfolds within an EE. Although our research questions are framed as ‘how’ questions, we treat them as causal in the critical realist sense (Vincent & Wapshott, 2014). Following Easton’s (2010) view that critical realist research asks ‘what caused the events associated with the phenomenon to occur’ (p. 123), we examine the mechanisms and conditions that shape actors’ agency and explore the causal processes underpinning systemic change towards gender inclusivity. Our research context is Tel Aviv’s EE. Tel Aviv’s EE includes almost 75% of all startups in Israel. It is characterised by high-tech and life sciences sectors and a dense network of innovators, investors, incubators, academic institutions, and government support that acts as a kind of scale-up engine.
Research Context
While women were primarily confined to the private sphere in the early decades of Israeli independence, a significant shift in their societal roles has occurred since the 1970s. Domestic feminist movements emerged, followed by the establishment of the Israel Women’s Network and various women’s initiatives addressing issues like violence, poverty, economic rights, and personal freedoms. Additionally, associations representing Haredi (ultra-Orthodox), Mizrahi, Arab, and immigrant women have formed, further expanding the scope of feminist activism in Israel (Herzog, 2018). This has been especially apparent in the field of reconciliation and conflict resolution, with women constituting a clear majority of activists in mixed-gender peace organisations and forming their own groups (e.g. Women in Black, the Jerusalem Center for Women, Bat Shalom, the Coalition of Women for Peace, the International Commission for a Just and Sustainable Palestinian–Israeli Peace, Isha l’Isha and Machsom Watch; Abramovitch, 2008). An overview of significant events related to gender inclusivity in Israel is presented in Table A1 in the Appendix.
Women have also been changing narratives within entrepreneurship through grassroots initiatives and advocacy work. Their work involves creating spaces that amplify women’s voices and perspectives in entrepreneurship, ultimately promoting greater equity and justice within society. At the institutional level, the government has recognised the importance of addressing the gender gap in technology and entrepreneurship and has implemented various interventions to support women entrepreneurs. These include incentive programmes for women-led startups, research and development grants, and dedicated support programmes in incubators/accelerators tailored to women (Avnimelech & Rechter, 2023; Callerstig et al., 2024). Additionally, a national plan was adopted to enhance human capital in the tech sector, focusing on empowering individuals from minority groups and increasing women’s representation (MFA, 2022).
Despite these advancements, Israeli society remains shaped by patriarchal structures that continue to influence business, politics, and law. The persistence of male-dominated networks, reinforced by the military’s role as a career pipeline and the influence of religious institutions on personal status laws, has historically limited women’s access to leadership positions and economic opportunities (Pfefferman & Frenkel, 2015). Gender-based segregation, especially in religious communities, extends to workplaces, academia, and public spaces, further reinforcing traditional roles and limiting opportunities for women. While feminist activism and EE interventions have made strides in promoting women’s entrepreneurship, systemic barriers remain. Our case thus represents a research context that reflects ‘an impressive march towards gender inclusivity paradoxically embedded in a virulently patriarchal power structure’ (Fogiel-Bijaoui, 2016, p. 423), manifesting the phenomenon under study in an unusual and extreme way (Neergaard, 2007).
Sampling
To conduct the study, we identified 46 informants as detailed below. We assigned informants culturally resonant, yet non-identifiable, pseudonyms that reflect their identities while upholding ethical standards. An overview of the informants, including their roles, experience, and community involvement in the EE, is presented in Table 1.
Overview of Informants (Tel Aviv).
Informants’ explicit self-identification as part of the EE at the time of interview.
We began by mapping the EE to identify informants who could offer situated perspectives on both the constraints and the opportunities shaping gender inclusivity. This process involved reviewing websites of entrepreneurship support organisations and startup databases, as well as searching LinkedIn and speaker lists from tech conferences, hackathons, and industry panels. Our sample included a range of actors occupying diverse positions within the EE, many of whom held multiple roles. These included women entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship enablers (individuals and NGOs supporting women’s entrepreneurship through mentorship, advising, education, advocacy, and networking), angel investors, and representatives from incubators/accelerators, VCs, and government agencies. Given Tel Aviv’s technology orientation, actors were active in biotech, medtech, energy tech, femtech, and fintech, among others. We also paid attention to actors’ affiliations with networks (e.g. Haredi and/or Arab entrepreneurial groups, women-in-tech collectives, army alumni circles, and investment networks), recognising that such spaces are central to resource flows and collective mobilisation within EEs. In our analysis, we remained attentive to how professional roles, along with socially recognised ethno-religious categories (i.e. Secular Jewish, Haredi, and Arab), shaped informants’ experiences of inclusivity in the EE.
In refining our sample, we also relied on our first interviews, which helped us identify initiatives not immediately visible in our initial search. As we followed informants’ recommendations, the same names were often suggested, indicating a highly active and widely recognised community advancing gender inclusivity in the EE. Ultimately, we focused on informants known for their advocacy work in women’s entrepreneurship, specifically those with a visible media presence, authorship of reports/policy briefs, and/or membership in lobby groups.
Data Collection
We collected data through semi-structured, in-depth interviews and a wide range of secondary data. Table 2 summarises the scope of our data collection.
Multiple Data Sources.
Interviews
We conducted 55 interviews with the 46 informants in five rounds from 2021 to 2025, lasting between 30 and 96 min: an initial set of 7 exploratory interviews, followed by 10 in the second round, 20 in the third, 9 in the fourth stage of data collection, and in the final stage, 9 follow-up interviews. We used a semi-structured interview technique to gather ‘both retrospective and real-time accounts by those…experiencing the phenomenon of theoretical interest’ (Gioia et al., 2013, p. 19). In line with critical realist approaches (Tuominen & Lehtonen, 2018), we treated the interview insights as situated accounts of structurally conditioned experience shaped by informants’ social positioning.
In the first round, we used broad, open-ended questions to explore how informants framed and understood gender inclusivity, as well as the types of formal and/or informal support available to women entrepreneurs. These initial conversations helped us map the EE and surface early insights that informed subsequent interview rounds. In the second round, we introduced more targeted questions about the broader sociocultural context and dynamics shaping women’s entrepreneurship in the EE (i.e. the influence of cultural and religious norms, military and professional networks, and women’s experiences of visibility, recognition, and role modelling). We then deepened our inquiry by examining how women responded to bias and exclusion in entrepreneurship, engaged in collective forms of support over time, and articulated the motivations underpinning these efforts. Later-stage interviews focused on informants’ reflections on developments within the EE, the roles played by different actors, and perceived pathways to advance gender inclusivity. Follow-up interviews were conducted to probe emerging interpretations, assess underlying assumptions, and strengthen explanatory claims.
Informants varied in the temporal reach of their direct experience, ranging from 5 to over 30 years in the EE. Long-standing actors recalled developments from the early 2000s onward. For example, Shira (woman entrepreneur) reflected on entering the tech sector in 2002: ‘I started my career right after my army service in 2002, I got released from a non-intelligence unit…the ecosystem felt very different…I was hired almost immediately by an IT company…long before the supportive tech ecosystem that we have now…there were no women back then…’ By contrast, more recent entrants tended to interpret earlier periods through received EE narratives, revealing how later generations make sense of the past. As Neta (woman entrepreneur) noted: ‘When I started in 2019, I had that feeling that I needed to be tougher…strict…because everyone was talking around that it [the EE] is a very male environment…But I feel the shift now…When I enter the room, being me… the effect is greater. Much greater than just trying to act like a man’. To account for this variation, we used temporal prompts in our interviews, asking informants to indicate when particular constraints, practices, or shifts first became salient to them, thereby enabling us to trace how experiences in the EE unfolded over time.
While our interview approach enabled rich, temporally layered insights, we acknowledge the potential for recall bias in informants’ reflections on past events (Dex, 1995). We treated retrospective accounts as expressions of cultural reflexivity and modes of practical reasoning (Archer, 2012). In this sense, the interview data reflected not just what happened but also how informants came to understand and act upon their embeddedness in structures, capturing the historical present; that is, how the past is reinterpreted in light of current events (Gummesson, 1991). To mitigate retrospective bias and discursive limitations (Ackroyd & Karlsson, 2014), we compared claims among informants, actor roles, and follow-up interviews (Dex, 1995; Fleetwood, 2005), and triangulated interview insights with secondary data (Lim, 2025). As such, we could temporarily situate informants’ retrospective accounts (Williams & Fathallah, 2024) and identify patterns or developments that might not surface through personal instances alone (Gioia et al., 2013).
Secondary Data
Secondary data comprised archival material (i.e. 49 government/NGO reports, news articles, academic research, and blogs; totalling 446 pages of written material; for a detailed breakdown, see Table A2 in the Appendix), 17 social media posts, and 7 webinars/YouTube videos spanning 1997 to 2025. All secondary materials were systematically specified and coded, and analytically relevant excerpts were selected to support and refine our theoretical arguments. Table A2 in the Appendix presents archival data codes (SDs) used in the findings section. In addition to enabling triangulation, these sources supported temporal analysis and were chronologically ordered to construct an empirical timeline of developments related to gender inclusivity within the EE. This was particularly important for reconstructing earlier periods of the EE that predated many informants’ direct experience, while also capturing more recent dynamics related to gender inclusivity. Secondary data also empirically and temporarily anchored Archer’s morphogenetic phases by documenting initiatives and shifts within the EE (Table 4).
Authors’ Reflexivity
Investigating gender inclusivity in a sensitive and complex sociopolitical context (cf. Abramovitch, 2008) prompted us to reflect on how our own researcher positioning shaped the fieldwork and the production of knowledge. Hence, we did not treat reflexivity as a separate step but embedded it throughout the research process (Alvesson et al., 2008). To support this, we engaged in critical peer debriefings, triangulation, and revisiting interpretations in light of secondary material (Alvesson et al., 2008). These practices enabled a situated understanding of our findings and transparency about the interpretive lenses through which they were produced (cf. Cunliffe, 2003).
Data Analysis
Our data analysis followed an abductive research strategy (Dubois & Gadde, 2002; Timmermans & Tavory, 2012), consistent with the logic of inquiry in critical realist case study research (Easton, 2010; Vincent & Wapshott, 2014). Abductive reasoning supports the generation of novel theoretical insights by moving ‘back and forth between empirical observations and theory’ (Dubois & Gadde, 2002, p. 555), guided by what Timmermans and Tavory (2012) describe as ‘a dialectic of cultivated theoretical sensitivity and methodological heuristics’ (p. 180).
Our analysis followed an insider–outsider approach (Dwyer & Buckle, 2009). One author led data collection and coding of interviews and secondary data, drawing on familiarity within the research context, while the other authors contributed analytical distance and reflexive questioning. Outsider perspectives were particularly useful when early interviews portrayed gender inclusivity as largely smooth or celebrated; in such instances, we revisited the empirical material to assess whether tensions, resistance, or unspoken exclusions were present but backgrounded in informants’ accounts.
We began by establishing a ‘broad theoretical base’ (Timmermans & Tavory, 2012, p. 174). Drawing on Archer’s (2003) morphogenetic framework, we structured the analysis around the phases of structural and cultural conditioning (T1), social interaction (T2–T3), and structural and cultural elaboration (T4). These phases served as overarching analytical dimensions for coding interviews and secondary data, as well as for time bracketing empirical periods in which particular dynamics became salient (Table 4). Within this framework, phase-specific conditions, mechanisms, and signals of morphogenetic potential were identified inductively through engagement with the empirical material.
The contribution of interviews and secondary data varied across phases. Structural and cultural conditioning (T1) and much of the social interaction phase (T2–T3) were reconstructed by triangulating retrospective interview accounts with secondary data to provide contextualisation and temporal anchoring. By contrast, structural and cultural elaboration (T4) drew primarily on insights that informants described as unfolding during the period of data collection, supplemented by contemporaneous documentary evidence. Signals of morphogenetic potential were mainly identified through repeated, externally observable indicators in secondary data, with interview insights used to interpret how such signals were perceived and acted upon.
Substantively, we started with the structural and cultural conditioning (T1) that shapes women’s participation in the EE, as these conditions constitute important precursors to later development (Vincent & Wapshott, 2014). From this theoretical starting point, we turned to our interviews, inductively analysing women’s constraints and opportunities in entrepreneurship. Empirically grounded themes included motherhood and domestic responsibilities, women’s dual role in economic and family life, exclusion from networks, and the role of military affiliation in legitimacy and access to entrepreneurial resources. These patterns varied across informants’ backgrounds and roles in the EE, indicating differential positioning. Because these themes reflected enduring constraints (i.e. historically sedimented conditions that continue to shape agency in the present; Archer, 2003) that could not be fully understood from interviews alone, we triangulated them with secondary data to situate them within the broader sociocultural context. We then aggregated the themes into two overarching conditions: domestic and work responsibilities and gatekeeping within the EE. These domains reflect how gendered subject positions were constructed and maintained within the EE, marking the first phase of the morphogenetic cycle (Archer, 1995).
Next, we focused on agential responses to these constraints through social interaction (T2–T3). Returning to the interviews, we analysed how women entrepreneurs, situated within a gendered and exclusionary EE, collectively mobilised support. Inductive analysis revealed patterns of mutual support, mentoring, community building, and deliberate efforts to increase public visibility and to engage in boundary-spanning work; these efforts were often supported and amplified through collaboration with allied women (i.e. women entrepreneurship enablers and women angel investors). To temporally anchor these efforts, we traced their emergence and recurrence in interview accounts. We simultaneously examined their external legitimation as organised initiatives (e.g. dated documentation of women-only networks, women-led communities, and formal/informal mentorship initiatives). Interview accounts were then iteratively matched against secondary data, returning to the empirical material when the empirical timeline was unclear or accounts diverged.
Integrating these insights, we identified two mechanisms of collective action: bonding and bridging. We use bonding and bridging in a reconceptualised sense that departs from their classical origins in network theory (Granovetter, 1973). Rather than treating them as structural tie properties, we use them as sensitising concepts for reflexive, collective action within and upon gendered constraints, consistent with a morphogenetic understanding of the structure-agency relationship (Archer, 1995, 2003). We are explicit that this extends classical definitions. As borrowing concepts from adjacent fields often entails ‘repackaging, refining, and repositioning’ them for new audiences (Oswick et al., 2011, p. 323), and entrepreneurship research routinely adapts such labels (Lundmark et al., 2025), bonding and bridging serve as recognisable metaphors (Cornelissen, 2005). In this study, bonding refers to women’s creation of solidarity, emotional support, and alternative spaces; bridging denotes their strategic engagement with other actors in the EE, boundary-spanning, and efforts to contest and reshape systemic conditions. Because such actions were agential efforts to contest conditioning, they also generated tensions of conditional belonging. Together, these dynamics reflect the second phase of the morphogenetic cycle (Archer, 1995).
We also analysed structural and cultural elaboration (T4), tracing how other actors in the EE engaged with gendered constraints and responded to earlier mobilisation. Returning to the interviews, it became clear that VCs, incubators/accelerators, and government agencies acted as ‘resource gatekeepers’ in the EE. We identified instances in which these actors began to refine EE norms and practices by formalising gender-focused initiatives through funding instruments, programmes, and policies. We also observed a gradual cultural shift, including women increasingly entering decision-making spaces and men acting and/or being perceived as allies. These patterns largely unfolded during the period of data collection, supplementing them with contemporaneous documentary evidence by tracing their external visibility through formalised initiatives (e.g. the launch of women’s entrepreneurship programmes, policy instruments, and recurring reports). We clustered these developments into two mechanisms of institutional mobilisation: structural embedding and inclusive mindsetting. Here too, agential efforts generated tensions in the form of subtle resistance. Thus, the last phase of the morphogenetic cycle (Archer, 1995) was identified.
Throughout the analysis, we attended to signals of morphogenetic potential, indicating that systemic change may be unfolding (Newman, 2020). Drawing primarily on secondary data, we identified three signals: awareness, marked by recognition of structural and cultural constraints; responsiveness, reflected in early inclusion-oriented interventions; and transformativeness, marked by visible shifts in representation, resource allocation, and EE norms. We operationalised these signals through observable indicators, statistics, and reports over time. Table 3 presents the results of our analysis.
Results of Abductive Analysis.
Findings
We begin this section by tracing how women’s entrepreneurial participation was shaped by structural and cultural conditioning (2000s to early 2010s). We then examine how women entrepreneurs and allied women (i.e. women entrepreneurship enablers and women angel investors) mobilised (early to mid-2010s), followed by structural and cultural elaboration (late 2010s to 2020s) in which resource gatekeepers (i.e. VCs, incubators/accelerators, and government agencies) engaged in institutional mobilisation. Across these phases, we identify signals of morphogenetic potential. Figure 1a and Table 4 illustrate how the morphogenetic phases materialised empirically in Tel Aviv across time.
(a) A morphogenetic framework of systemic change towards gender inclusivity in EEs (empirical version). (b) A morphogenetic framework of systemic change towards gender inclusivity in EEs (theoretical version).
Empirical illustration of morphogenetic phases elaborated with secondary data.
Structural and Cultural Conditioning (T1)
In the first phase of the morphogenetic cycle, agency is shaped by sedimented structural and cultural conditions that pre-exist actors (Archer, 1995). As Israel’s high-tech sector rapidly expanded in the early 2000s, women’s entrepreneurial participation was shaped by domestic and work responsibilities and gatekeeping within the EE. These conditions affected women differently, positioning them unequally within the EE.
Condition 1: Domestic and Work Responsibilities
Throughout the 2000s (Table 4, Row 1), many women entered entrepreneurship through small-scale ventures in sectors such as childcare, fashion, food, home services, and retail, often motivated by economic necessity and caregiving demands, rather than opportunity-based logic (SD 1). These businesses were viable but were generally positioned outside the high-growth, investment-driven EE (SD2, SD3). Chana (policymaker working on women’s entrepreneurship programmes) recalled: ‘…when I look at my children and my daughters, there is definitely much more opportunity now than there was 20 years ago…We saw more women opening businesses. But these were not the kinds of ventures that went to accelerators or pitched to VCs. They were working around the family’. This form of participation was influenced by Israel’s pronatalist, gendered welfare system (SD4, SD6), where women remained the primary caregivers (SD5), despite women’s high workforce participation (SD7). Yael (woman angel investor and enabler) reflected, ‘In this society, women don’t have a choice, okay? We have to work, but we also have to have a family’. These conditions did not significantly shift over time, remaining salient across the studied period, as reflected in a 2018 media interview: ‘Women are still being viewed as caring parents…women may be 50 per cent of the workforce in Israel, but childhood is still seen as a ‘women’s issue’. Children are not yet seen as a family issue or a parenting issue. The language has to change. There has to be the understanding that women work, and that gender roles have shifted. The support system has to support the family, not the supposedly unusual women who choose to have a career or job’.
Informants emphasised the dual role of women in economic and family life, reinforcing the norm that entrepreneurship should accommodate caregiving, rather than challenge it. For Jewish women from secular backgrounds, the timing of entrepreneurship often coincided with the onset of early motherhood (SD1, SD15). Lina (women entrepreneurship enabler) noted: ‘If you look at the average age when women start their startups, it is usually the same age when women become mothers or have children. And when you have three children, need to take maternity leave, and leave your business…it creates a challenging situation’. Among Haredi women, constraints were even more pronounced, shaped by expectations of large families, early marriage, and men’s minimal participation in caregiving (SD6). For Arab women, gender norms intersected with restricted mobility, limited access to higher education, and labour market segregation, often constraining their entrepreneurial choices to informal, localised businesses (SD8). Miriam (women entrepreneurship enabler for Haredi women) explained: ‘You invite an Orthodox woman [Haredi] to an event, and she might have to eat in a separate room or not at all. Arab women? Many don’t even make it to university. Where does entrepreneurship even begin for them?’
Condition 2: Gatekeeping Within the EE
In parallel with caregiving constraints, women across different social groups also faced gatekeeping within the EE, which manifested as limited access to networks and legitimacy (SD13). In the 2000s, Tel Aviv consolidated as Israel’s leading high-tech EE, while the ‘Startup Nation’ narrative emerged (Table 4, Row 1). Dalia, women entrepreneurship enabler and VC partner, remembered: ‘…it was in the late 1990s, early 2000s, where a lot of Israeli high-tech companies were doing IPOs in NASDAQ [stock market index]. This was also the moment when I got involved in the high-tech sector’. The prototypical entrepreneur was constructed around the figure of the elite-unit veteran, STEM-educated, and well-connected man. As Yonatan (entrepreneurship enabler) noted: ‘It is the White Ashkenazi man [Jewish population whose ancestors lived in Central and Eastern Europe] who finished the 8200 unit and has a good network’. Military service, particularly in elite technological units like Unit 8200 (an Israeli military intelligence unit focused on cybersecurity, signals intelligence, and advanced technologies, with alumni often occupying prominent roles as entrepreneurs, investors, and startup founders), was a gateway to the EE (SD9). Yet, many Jewish women from secular backgrounds, and nearly all Haredi and Arab women, did not serve due to religious exemption or a lack of obligation (SD10). Military service also shaped entrepreneurial self-perception, with men more likely to see themselves as ‘high-potential entrepreneurs’ (SD9, SD12). Lia (woman angel investor) noted: ‘VC funds love men from these kinds of elite units [Unit 8200] because they are well-equipped. They learn how to manage all kinds of cyber problems, and it’s seen as the best training ground for an entrepreneur’. By 2012, 90% of VC-backed entrepreneurs had served in elite units, reinforcing a powerful network advantage (SD11). Ilana (woman entrepreneur) noted, ‘The army is where networks are formed. If you’re not there, especially in the elite units, it’s very hard to break in later’. Even for women who did serve in the army, full participation in alumni networks was not guaranteed. Leila (women entrepreneurship enabler for Haredi and Arab women) reflected: ‘So the networks exist … the access to the network exists…All the circumstances are in place, yet there is still friction. Something is not happening. Even in the alumni association, there are fewer than 50% women represented, although women are well-represented in these army units. So how come?’ The legacy of military-based networks continues to influence access to entrepreneurial resources in 2024 (SD46), perpetuating women’s structural and cultural conditioning in the EE.
Among Jewish women from secular backgrounds, access to the EE often required a form of gendered performance. Sarah (women entrepreneurship enabler) described, ‘You walk into a room, and most people are men. You don’t feel comfortable, and it’s hard to speak. You need to adapt according to the unspoken norms. This often happens in the tech sector, and the more you climb the ladder, the more it happens’. Women spoke of needing to perform as ‘surrogate men’ (SD13). Batsheva (woman entrepreneur) recalled, ‘Even when we were allowed into the ‘circle’ we had to perform like the men…confident, aggressive, and never doubting…It didn’t come naturally, and they [men] noticed. You need to speak ‘8200’ and adopt a tough-skin banter to be taken seriously’. By contrast, Arab and Haredi women have long been absent from the EE. Rivka (woman policymaker and enabler for Arab and Haredi women’s inclusion) reflected, ‘I think there are a lot of very privileged women that are doing okay, but there are a lot of marginalized populations that just have no access to entrepreneurship…the Arab populations or ultra-Orthodox [Haredi]…there are so many different populations that are just not part of the game, and they should be’. In 2024, Arab and Haredi women accounted for just 1.4% and 5.6% of high-tech employees, respectively, and together made up less than 0.1% of women-led high-tech startups (SD14). Despite modest improvements, these figures illustrate that structural and cultural conditioning (T1) persists throughout the study period.
Signal 1: Awareness
By the late 2000s, a growing awareness of the structural and cultural conditioning shaping women’s entrepreneurial participation emerged, particularly among women entrepreneurs and women entrepreneurship enablers (Table 4, Row 2). This period saw the launch of women-driven initiatives aimed at redefining women’s roles and supporting their transition into self-employment, contributing to an increase in women’s entry into the high-tech sector (SD41, SD45). As of 2010, women comprised 5.3% of all CEOs of newly founded startups in Israel, totalling 27 (SD16). Dalia (women entrepreneurship enabler and VC partner) reflected on how women became conscious of these constraints: ‘We [women] are all like on a long trail…some haven’t gotten to the glass wall yet. I bumped into the wall already early on…when I started my career in the late 1990s…This is the wall, welcome. We started to talk about it back in the days…They [women] were all aware that as women, they have a ‘special challenge’. They all, I don’t know if all, but they became very much minded to help other women break the wall’. In this period, women shifted from internalising exclusion to naming it, as Dalia continued, ‘You [women] have to develop your senses to catch things like that [the glass wall] because we’re so indoctrinated, we internalised our inferiority that we don’t even notice’. Dana (woman angel investor) recalled: ‘When I started [over 20 years ago] …we [women] were starting to acknowledge the gap. It wasn’t that women lacked talent…women also felt more empowered. If you weren’t part of the army’s elite tech units or the old boys’ VC networks, you were invisible. There was an awareness that something was going wrong…and it’s not our fault’.
At the National Conference for Women Entrepreneurs in 2011, an entrepreneurship enabler warned: ‘The hi-tech industry is losing out from not having enough diversity; it’s losing opinions and points of view…There aren’t enough women entrepreneurs and CEOs, and the whole industry is suffering from this’. Awareness also began to surface among some early-stage investors. Yosseph (VC partner) reflected on the time when he started at VC over 10 years ago: ‘We believed in diversity, but we looked at our portfolio and realised we’re not living up to that. We don’t have enough women. Not even close. We needed to ask why, despite our open application policy, our portfolio was male-dominated. We need to address the women as well’. These discursive shifts signal that conditioning begins to destabilise, marking the emergence of reflexivity and planting seeds for later social interaction.
Social Interaction (T2–T3)
Following the growing awareness of structural and cultural conditioning, in the early 2010s, women entrepreneurs and allied women (i.e., women entrepreneurship enablers and women angel investors) engaged in collective action, manifested as bonding and bridging, which persisted throughout the study period. This marked the social interaction phase of the morphogenetic cycle (Archer, 1995). Agential efforts to contest exclusion also generated tensions of conditional belonging.
Mechanism 1: Bonding
Bonding emerged as a bottom-up response to conditioning. In the early 2010s, women began creating alternative, women-led communities (Table 4, Row 3). Miriam (woman enabler for Haredi women in tech) said: ‘When I moved to Israel 10–15 years ago…there were a lot of women networks being created to allow women to support each other and thrive…on Facebook and WhatsApp, and several meet-up groups for women entrepreneurs’. These spaces provided a sense of belonging. Shira (woman entrepreneur and enabler) recalled: ‘I created my community [in 2014] because they [women entrepreneurs] did not feel they belonged before. This is what we try to fix: the belonging. Whenever we create a women’s community for women in tech, women entrepreneurs, and women developers, we are bridging the gap in today’s society and ecosystem’. Launched in 2012, Yazamiot was one of the first large-scale communities to address the gender gap in entrepreneurship. Since then, the community has grown into one of Israel’s largest communities, with over 8,000 members (SD17, SD18). As stated in a 2019 media interview (SD18), ‘We are the leading community for Israeli female entrepreneurs to meet, network, learn and help each other, and our vision is to dramatically increase the presence of women entrepreneurs across these industries…there is much awareness as to the gender gap, but our community aims to combat this by creating great collaborations and opportunities’.
Bonding was formed around shared experiences of motherhood, ethnicity, religion, and sector. Sarah (women entrepreneurship enabler) reflected on the need for women’s networks that addressed the realities of motherhood: ‘Some people ask why we need more women’s networks. Why is it needed? There is something different when you have a whole women’s network. You feel much more comfortable sharing. There are also lots of concerns and all the things that you have around motherhood. What kind of mother am I? Am I giving enough time to my children while doing my own business?’ Over time, many of these women-only communities became formalised. For instance, She Codes (established in 2013) grew into the largest community for women developers in tech (SD19), while the Jerusalem Women Entrepreneurs Network (established in 2012) provided tailored business incubation and financial access for Haredi women (SD20). For many, these spaces sparked the idea that entrepreneurship was even possible. Shira (woman entrepreneur and enabler) noted: ‘The women entrepreneurs create this environment for more women to become entrepreneurs…we create a community. It is very safe to ask questions and consult others. We encourage them to become entrepreneurs’.
Informants also described how bonding enabled peer mentoring, skill-sharing, and informal advice. Rachel (serial woman entrepreneur and community organiser) noted: ‘We are helping each other. And, you know, someone says, “Do you know someone who can do this?” or “Can you do this?” or “Can you help me with this?” or “Can I practice my presentation with you?” or “Can I practice my pitch with you?” These kinds of things are remarkable’. Research has shown that in the absence of institutional support, peer mentoring among women entrepreneurs can support venture survival, fostering collective capacity within their communities to address systemic challenges (Lenz et al., 2025). Batya (women entrepreneurship enabler) reflected, ‘It [motherhood] changes everything or a lot about your life and your physical well-being. I had a lot of medical issues after [giving birth seven years ago]. So, for me, finding female mentors after that is about how women are perceived in the workforce once they have kids. I do go to a lot of female mentors. I am in a lot of women groups now’.
Over time, women-only communities began to reach across backgrounds and positions in EE. Networks like Woman2Woman paired early-career women with senior women mentors from high-tech, entrepreneurship, law, and public policy (SD21). Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Women Entrepreneurs Network evolved into a cross-network initiative that enabled interactions among secular Jewish, Haredi, and Arab women entrepreneurs (SD19). Rachel (serial woman entrepreneur and community organiser) recalled how coordination became practices of solidarity: ‘I see them at events [founders of Haredi women network] and, when the event gets announced, we always ask who is going to be there, what time you are going to be there… can you record the beginning?…when you got a bunch of kids, you have a lot of things to do’. These acts of care transformed fragmented and localised women-only communities into a sense of shared movement. As Yael (woman angel investor) put it: ‘There was like this feminist wave starting in 2015, 2016 … It’s like this feminist wave that came up, and together with Israel having an ecosystem…something happened…women got together’.
Mechanism 2: Bridging
While bonding responded to exclusion by creating alternative spaces, bridging involved entering and strategically engaging with the EE, particularly with those actors who held access to entrepreneurial resources and decision-making power. Women began stepping out of women-only communities and negotiating presence with VC firms, incubators/accelerators, and government agencies. As Yasmin (women entrepreneurship enabler) explained, ‘One of the goals that we have in our [women-only community] … We are sometimes the foot in the door for women because great female entrepreneurs have great ideas. But sometimes you just do not get an opportunity to be connected to the right circles and have the right network to make those ideas successful and to have someone who believes in them, invest in them’. As part of this process, women also invited men into their communities, positioning them as listeners and allies. Shira (woman entrepreneur and enabler) recalled: ‘I do have men in my community. I want everyone to work together. I think the change can be made together, not divided…We invite men to join us and participate in our conference. It was the biggest, uh, conference for women entrepreneurs, for women in tech at that time [in 2014]. We wanted to reach 30% men in the audience. All the other speakers were women, but the audience was varied’.
Bridging became especially pronounced in the mid-2010s (Table 4, Row 3). Initiatives such as Parliament 51, an advocacy network that aims to close the gender gap in entrepreneurship (SD22), and The Women of Startup Nation, a community that began as a social media initiative spotlighting women executives, founders, and investors (SD23), disrupted the invisibility of women in entrepreneurship. Eden (entrepreneurship enabler for the LGBTQ+ community) noted: ‘Many influential women are visible…They do make more noise and bring more presence. Such visibility … redefines who can be seen as an entrepreneur’ Certain women entrepreneurs with high social capital, often based in Tel Aviv, began acting as boundary spanners, helping connect women-only communities with VCs, investors, incubators/accelerators, and corporate tech hubs (SD24). Arie (woman entrepreneur and enabler) recalled: ‘My friend has an organisation [women-only community]. She has been doing a lot of work over the past ten years, totally voluntarily. She has been able to harness organisations like Google and Microsoft. Today, everybody knows her. She created an impressive community that played a very large role in empowering women to embark on an entrepreneurial journey’.
Bridging also took the form of advocacy. Neta (woman entrepreneur) emphasised: ‘I am trying to encourage women to be founders of VCs or to be involved in managing roles in the company…It is really important because we need to change the discussion and the environment’. Other entrepreneurship enablers framed advocacy as entrepreneurial activism (SD25, SD27): ‘Rather than waiting for the government to take action, Israel’s female entrepreneurs are doing what they do best: taking matters into their own hands’. Bridging positioned women not only as entrepreneurs but as actors actively redefining the rules of participation in the EE. Inbar (women entrepreneurship enabler) recalled: ‘This is why I created my organisation [in 2018] … with the goal of growing the number of women in the field, creating a platform for them to explore synergies and share opportunities and challenges…Because we realised that sometimes women hold themselves back, not recognising that business is also a political game. You have to advocate, negotiate, and actively go after what you want. Much of what we teach is about this mindset: if you don’t lean in for change and help other women, we cannot change the system’.
Tension: Conditional Belonging
Despite these collective gains, the benefits of bonding and bridging were not experienced equally across social groups, as evidenced throughout the study period. While many women found belonging in women-only communities, Haredi and Arab women often felt marginalised. Yasmin (women entrepreneurship enabler for Arab women entrepreneurs) noted: ‘These groups are empowering, yes…but they often reflect the same hierarchies we’re trying to change. If you’re not secular, not in tech, or don’t speak the right language, you feel it. You’re not really part of it. I would prefer to speak with people where it doesn’t get too heated, and I don’t feel bad because I hurt someone’s feelings by saying something. It is a limitation. I don’t think the social spaces allow for good discussions in the first place….’ Eden (entrepreneurship enabler for the LGBTQ+ community) reflected: ‘There’s not enough inter-group communication. I feel like they [group managers] prefer to keep talking with people who agree with them…Group managers tend to stay in their comfort zones’. Esther (women entrepreneurship enabler for Haredi women entrepreneurs) noted: ‘The community feels tight, but only if you already belong’.
Signal 2: Responsiveness
The mobilisation of women entrepreneurs and allied women began to shape the framing of inclusivity in the EE. VCs, incubators/accelerators, and government agencies began responding to growing pressure from grassroots networks and advocacy initiatives. This responsiveness was reflected in a wave of gender-focused initiatives that began in the mid-2010s (Table 4, Row 4). Notable examples include the Google Campus Women-Only Accelerator (SD28), with its Campus for Moms programme, which provided tailored mentoring and co-working spaces equipped with nurseries, allowing women, particularly those on maternity leave, to participate in entrepreneurship activities. In 2017, Power in Diversity Israel was launched as a consortium of over 75 VC firms and 200 startups committed to gender inclusivity in tech, while the Power in Diversity VC movement gained traction in the EE by offering inclusion benchmarks for investment decision-making (SD29). Notably, a government-led incentive programme for women entrepreneurs was launched in 2019, offering R&D grants covering up to 75% of costs in the first year (SD30).
These efforts gained international recognition when the EE was ranked one of the most supportive environments for women entrepreneurs worldwide (SD31). While these initiatives have not yet led to a structural transformation, they have marked a notable shift in discourse. Policy statements and public communications started framing gender inclusivity as essential to the tech sector (SD30). One VC fund declared: ‘We are committed to fostering inclusion and improving diversity in the venture capital and entrepreneurial ecosystems and developing both near- and long-term solutions to effect positive change in the ecosystem’. Responsiveness during this period primarily amplified the voices and ventures of certain women, while other groups saw only marginal gains. Yet, Arab and Haredi women expressed greater interest in high-tech entrepreneurship than their male counterparts (7.1% compared to 3.5% for Arab men, and 9.1% compared to 8.3% for Haredi men; SD48). Although their actual representation in the sector remained limited, as reported in 2024, this pattern signalled an emergent reimagining of entrepreneurial possibility among women in these groups (SD26, SD48).
Structural and Cultural Elaboration (T4)
By the late 2010s and the beginning of the 2020s, women’s collective action had gained visibility, influencing the practices and visions of VCs, incubators/accelerators, and government agencies. Positioned as key resource gatekeepers, these actors responded through institutional mobilisation. Hence, structural embedding and inclusive mindsetting illustrate the emergence of the structural and cultural elaboration phase, though tensions reflected in resistance also surfaced. In this phase, earlier sociocultural mobilisation creates the conditions for structural redefinition, even as longstanding sociocultural conditioning continues to operate in parallel (Archer, 1995).
Mechanism 1: Structural Embedding
Around 2020, gender inclusivity was increasingly formalised through coordinated interventions in funding, infrastructure, and policy (Table 4, Row 5). An example was the National Innovation Agency’s gender-equity measures, including a 10% grant increase for women-led startups, early-stage support, and leadership training in deep-tech and managerial roles (SD32). Structural efforts also included the She Codes and Elite Technology Unit tech-career pipeline (established in 2023), which tackled military-network gatekeeping that had long privileged men from elite units while excluding women, Arab, and Haredi groups. Ultra-Code (established in 2018) was also one of the first initiatives aimed at structural embedding. This was a training programme in technological subjects for Haredi women that grew to over 1,400 participants by 2024. As Chana (woman policymaker) explained: ‘We’ve had gender initiatives before, but they were too broad. Now [2021], we’re linking money to impact and demanding that programs reach beyond the usual urban elite. Inclusion means Arab women, Haredi women, women outside Tel Aviv’. Aaron (entrepreneurship enabler), who worked closely with a network of accelerators, described how previously marginalised groups were being prioritised: ‘ [in 2022] we have four different accelerator programs…one for women entrepreneurs, one for impact projects, one…for the Arab community…and one for Haredi women…the most privileged people in the ecosystem are actively seeking ways to be more inclusive and grow the ecosystem and enable sectors that have been excluded in the past’. Indeed, accelerators in Israel attract a disproportionately higher share of women entrepreneurs, who report greater gains in entrepreneurial knowledge, network expansion, and self-efficacy than men, indicating that their design responds to women’s specific needs (SD49).
High-profile events in the EE also reinforced structural embedding in the 2020s. The annual Women Leaders Summit in Tel Aviv (established in 2024 and 2025) brought together entrepreneurs, investors, and policymakers, embedding gender inclusivity within mainstream entrepreneurship events in the EE (SD36). The Summit also launched the Next-Gen Women’s Entrepreneurship Award in 2024, which recognised women entrepreneurs and conferred both visibility and legitimacy, signalling that women’s entrepreneurship was part of the EE’s competitiveness (SD37). Structural elaboration also extended to the knowledge infrastructure. Annual reports, such as the Women in High-Tech Status Report (published in 2024 and 2025) and the RISE Israel Funding Report (published in 2023 and 2024), quantified disparities in participation, funding, leadership, and tech employment among secular Jewish, Haredi, and Arab women, serving to diagnose these disparities and inform the development of new interventions (SD38).
Mechanism 2: Inclusive Mindsetting
As part of cultural elaboration, we observed a gradual shift in how VCs, incubators/accelerators, and government agencies framed gender inclusivity, beginning in the late 2010s and early 2020s (Table 4, Row 5). Daniel (accelerator representative and angel investor) described that in the 2020s, support was no longer ‘just about offering programs for women…it was about rethinking how entrepreneurship was defined…and supported’. This redefinition increasingly took on an intersectional orientation, recognising that different groups of women face distinct structural barriers. A 2023 media interview with an accelerator representative captured this approach (SD39): ‘There are barriers facing specific populations, such as ultra-Orthodox Jews, the Ethiopian community, Arabs, and women. These are the populations we are trying to assist and promote by providing quality education, academically and practically, and by removing numerous obstacles. What does that mean? It means that if you have a cultural issue, we will support you and work with organizations that can help you. If you have an economic issue, we will provide you with scholarships and living stipends. If you have a language problem, we offer preparatory courses in Hebrew and English, as well as mathematics. Essentially, any obstacle that prevents a candidate from integrating, we will find a solution. This way, we hope to help the high-tech industry become what it is supposed to be–enriched and diverse’.
This shift was also visible in the increasing representation of women in decision-making roles within the EE. Yael (women entrepreneurship enabler and angel investor) reflected: ‘There’s another thing that is happening now [2023]: there are more and more women in VC. And so, really, really big change…It helps because I think the bias is not intentional, but I do not think men hear women the same way women hear other women. So, starting to have women in investment and decision making…it can make an environment where you have voices that are not just the male voices…hearing female voices and accepting that’. One example of an intervention supporting women’s role in decision-making was the launch of the VC Academy (established in 2022), a professional accelerator created to train and mentor women aspiring to leadership positions in the VC sector. Such an initiative aimed to disrupt the traditionally male-dominated norms of VC by reframing who was seen as a legitimate investor (SD40). Shira (woman entrepreneur) recalled: ‘One of the initiatives I took part in [2022] was VC Academy. They aim to increase the number of female investors. So, whenever you get to the room to pitch your startup, you are going to see not only men but also women there’. In a 2023 media interview, another VC representative reflected on the cultural shift within the field (SD33): ‘For a long time, and still today, VCs were a boys-only club. You needed to have a very specific background and connections in order to get in. I think VCs can see what is happening globally today, something is changing, and even if they don’t believe in it, they understand they need to make a change and not just have women in gender specific positions like administration…I think that if you want to keep a competitive advantage, you need a diverse team. Otherwise, you will be irrelevant in a few years. Every fund should look at their portfolio and ask themselves what they can do to set an example’.
Men in the EE also began to emerge as allies for women’s entrepreneurship. This allyship was increasingly institutionalised in cross-sector collaborations, most notably through the Tech50:50 initiative (established in 2023). This programme brought together over 200 partners, including major tech firms, academic institutions, and government agencies, to synchronise inter-organisational efforts and promote gender inclusivity in the high-tech sector (SD32). Dana (woman angel investor) observed in 2023: ‘Men are definitely involved in the conversation and actually in the meetings…in dedication to the need to be a more inclusive ecosystem. They [men] are 94% of the ecosystem. You cannot change anything without having them [men] on board’. Chaya (woman entrepreneur and enabler) continued: ‘In the past ten years, I have seen more men advocating for women entrepreneurs. Not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because they understand the ecosystem is missing out’. In a 2024 media interview, this reasoning was echoed, linking gender inclusivity to national economic strength (SD34): ‘Increasing the representation of women in tech in general, and in key roles in particular, is a tangible necessity, both for the sake of promoting equality and for expanding the workforce in this industry…Especially now, when the economic locomotive has also become a significant social engine in Israel, it is even more important to make the sector more equal and diverse’.
Tension: Resistance to Structural and Cultural Elaboration
Systemic change does not unfold apart from pre-existing structural and cultural conditioning (T1); instead, it continues to operate in parallel (Archer, 1995). While few informants spoke directly about resistance, the persistence of systemic barriers remained evident. As Orli (women entrepreneurship enabler) cautioned in 2025: ‘There’s always a danger that people will say, “We’ve done enough.” That’s when we start moving backwards. The backlash isn’t loud, but it’s real, and it’s creeping into boardroom conversations’. By 2025, this concern was echoed in multiple op-eds and public commentaries, heightened by the rollbacks of diversity, inclusion, and equity programmes in the United States (SD42). As a director of an incubator noted in a media interview in 2025 (SD42): ‘Regulations and policies aren’t as strong as personal opinions and biases…decline in public awareness could result in a weaker effort to promote female presence in fields lacking representation…as a leading and innovative economic force, the high-tech industry must actively push for change’.
Signal 3: Transformativeness
By the mid-2020s, visible shifts in representation and resource allocation began to signal that cultural and structural elaboration was in progress (Table 4, Row 6). In 2010, only 5.3% of startup CEOs were women (SD16). By 2015, this had increased to 9%, and between 2013 and 2024, the average over the decade reached 10.6%. In 2024, 13% of CEO positions and 20% of senior management roles were held by women. Between 2018 and 2024, the representation of women in R&D roles also increased significantly, by approximately 140%. Over the same period, women accounted for roughly 36% of the high-tech workforce, representing a 66% increase over a decade (SD14).
Parallel developments occurred in the VC sector. As of 2023, 31% of VC funds had at least one female partner (SD43), and women represented 20.8% of all partners across the 53 largest firms, up from 16.5% in 2022 (SD14). While these trends reflect a modest but meaningful increase in women’s influence in capital allocation (SD33), they remain signals of transformativeness, indicating how systemic change unfolds. As one representative of a government agency acknowledged in 2025 (SD44): ‘The change is evident in the numbers, but it is far from satisfactory. More women are studying high-tech professions, more women are working in high-tech, but when looking at management, entrepreneurship, and investments, the gaps remain deep. In the last decade, the number of women employed in the sector has grown significantly, but this has hardly translated into an improvement in their rate in key positions. We must continue to work to create equal opportunities for women in high-tech-from expanding training and education programs, through developing programs to promote women in management positions, to encouraging female entrepreneurship. Only a comprehensive and ongoing initiative that involves the government and the industry can bring about real change’.
Structural and cultural conditioning remains particularly persistent for other women’s groups. The representation of Haredi and Arab women in high-tech has indeed increased over time (SD44). For instance, Arab women’s participation in tech grew by 273% between 2014 and 2023 (SD48). However, as of 2024, both groups remain underrepresented in R&D, senior management, and high-growth ventures, as they were in the 2010s (SD14, SD47).
Discussion
This study explored (a) how diverse actors engage with gendered constraints, and (b) how systemic change towards gender inclusivity unfolds in an EE. Drawing on a critical realist perspective (Archer, 1995, 2003), we show that such engagement unfolds along an agency-structure continuum, spanning individual navigation, collective action, and institutional mobilisation. These engagements constitute a morphogenetic process, in which structural and cultural conditioning (T1), social interaction (T2–T3), and structural and cultural elaboration (T4) are analytically distinct yet temporally linked. Across these phases, awareness, responsiveness, and transformativeness emerge as signals of morphogenetic potential.
Structural and cultural conditioning reflect the analytical predominance of structure, situating actors within pre-existing arrangements that constrain, but do not fully determine, their agency (Archer, 1995, 2003). In our case, women entrepreneurs encountered such conditioning through domestic and work responsibilities and gatekeeping within the EE, unevenly experienced depending on social positionality. Yet, moments of ‘identity dissonance’ (Swail & Marlow, 2018), such as feeling compelled to forgo maternity leave or facing legitimacy concerns due to lack of credentials, triggered reflexive self-evaluation. This aligns with Archer’s (2003, p. 104) view of reflexivity as the capacity to consider oneself in relation to one’s social contexts and respond accordingly. Hence, awareness of these constraints among women entrepreneurs and their women allies is an early signal of morphogenetic potential, enabling the reinterpretation and contestation of existing arrangements and setting the stage for collective action.
Social interaction reflects women’s collective action, marking a shift to collective agency (Archer, 2003). Women entrepreneurs and their women allies mobilise through bonding and bridging, often fostered within women-only networks. Bonding creates emotional safety, solidarity, and alternative spaces for articulating shared struggles, while enabling bridging through outward engagement with resource gatekeepers to reshape existing structures through advocacy, negotiation, and contestation. Analytically, bonding and bridging function as complementary and interdependent mechanisms through which collective agency opens new paths within the EE (de Bruin & Swail, 2025; Isakova & Stroila, 2025). At the same time, collective action surfaces tensions of conditional belonging, reflecting intersectional inequalities (Crenshaw, 2013), the reproduction of privilege (Aronson, 2017), and concerns about performative or exclusionary solidarity (Villeséche & Josserand, 2017). As collective action intensifies, early institutional responses signal responsiveness as a further indicator of morphogenetic potential, marking a transition towards structural and cultural elaboration in the EE.
Structural and cultural elaboration depends on how collective mobilisation is taken up by other actors in the EE, foregrounding the interplay of agency and structure (Archer, 2003). Institutional mobilisation unfolds through structural embedding and inclusive mindsetting, as resource gatekeepers mobilise resources and negotiate meanings around entrepreneurship to position gender inclusivity as a shared responsibility in the EE, thus aiming to change the conditioning structures. Yet, such elaboration can also generate tensions in the form of subtle resistance and fragile commitments. As institutional mobilisation deepens, transformativeness emerges as a further signal of morphogenetic potential, evidenced by uneven shifts in representation, resource allocation, and norms. Rather than indicating completed transformation, these shifts signal a directional reorientation of the EE; elaboration begins to take hold while coexisting with enduring forms of conditioning (Archer, 2003).
Taken together, our theoretical framework, depicted in Figure 1b, offers an analytically generalisable account of how systemic change towards gender inclusivity unfolds over time, while highlighting its partial and ongoing character. The passage of time alone does not dissolve structural and cultural conditioning, which may persist through morphostasis unless actively contested (Archer, 2003). As our case illustrates, this endurance is evident despite more than two decades of EE development and measurable progress in women’s entrepreneurship. What moves the system forward is not women’s individual adaptation, as emphasised in postfeminist discourses (Rottenberg, 2014), but collective empowerment and structural transformation enacted by diverse EE actors (i.e. women entrepreneurs, enablers, angel investors, VCs, incubators/accelerators, and government agencies) working together across roles to reconfigure who can participate in entrepreneurship, how, and on what terms.
Theoretical Contributions
Our findings contribute to research on entrepreneurship and gender, inclusive EEs, and critical realism in management and organisation studies.
Firstly, we advance research on women’s entrepreneurship (Arshed et al., 2023; Meliou & Ozbilgin, 2024) by theorising women’s bonding and bridging as agential mechanisms of collective action that can trigger structural and cultural elaboration within the EE. Our findings show that these mechanisms emerge mainly within women-only networks. Such networks are often positioned as policy interventions that foster belonging (cf. Arshed et al., 2023), and prior research mainly highlights their limitations, including confinement to ‘pink ghettos’ (Harrison et al., 2024), the reproduction of gendered niches (Harrison et al., 2020), and limited access to resources circulating in mixed-gender networks (McAdam et al., 2019). Against this backdrop, our contribution lies in specifying how and when such women’s communities can become generative rather than constraining.
Guided by Archer’s (1995, 2003) morphogenetic approach, we reconceptualise bonding and bridging, traditionally understood as structural tie properties (Granovetter, 1973), as reflexive and purposive forms of collective agency through which women respond to, and seek to reshape, structural and cultural conditioning. In this sense, women’s collective agency reflects what Aronson (2017) terms ‘feminist consciousness’, an ‘awareness and critique of gender inequalities’ (p. 335) that enables broader mobilisation. As these mechanisms intensify, mobilisation extends beyond women-only spaces to engage resource gatekeepers around gendered constraints. Our findings thus show that systemic change towards gender inclusivity is a collective endeavour, co-constituted through coalition-building and shared responsibility, reinforcing perspectives that view EEs as scaffolds for systemic change (cf. DeJordy et al., 2020; Drori et al., 2025; Hakanen et al., 2025; Spanuth & Urbano, 2025).
Secondly, we extend research on inclusive EEs (Bakker & McMullen, 2023; Brush et al., 2019; de Bruin & Swail, 2025; Isakova & Stroila, 2025) by developing a morphogenetic framework of systemic change towards gender inclusivity. Early scholarship established that EEs are gendered and argued for shifting attention from ‘fixing the women’ to ‘fixing the system’, while more recent work has outlined the need for new inclusive pathways (Bakker & McMullen, 2023; de Bruin & Swail, 2025) and highlighted the role of diverse actors in shaping EE trajectories (Qin, 2026). Yet, the mechanisms underlying systemic change have remained underexamined.
Our morphogenetic framework addresses this gap by theorising systemic change as a temporally layered process of structural and cultural conditioning, sociocultural mobilisation, and structural and cultural elaboration (Archer, 1995, 2003). Across these phases, we identify awareness, responsiveness, and transformativeness as empirically observable signals of morphogenetic potential, offering a processual account of when, where, and through whom systemic change towards gender inclusivity becomes possible. At the same time, our findings underscore that systemic change remains ongoing and incomplete, echoing Archer’s (1995) insight that change is cyclical and iterative.
While progress towards gender inclusivity in the EE may become visible, structural and cultural conditioning persists, and efforts towards elaboration may encounter subtle resistance, risking superficial or short-lived interventions (Callerstig et al., 2024) that do not result in sustained systemic change (Sullivan & Delaney, 2017). Accordingly, systemic change depends on sustained collective mobilisation by diverse actors, even when structures remain resistant.
Thirdly, we contribute to the growing engagement between critical realism and organisation and management research (Delbridge & Edwards, 2013; Tuominen & Lehtonen, 2018) by demonstrating the value of a morphogenetic lens for theorising systemic change. While critical realism has gained traction by examining the interplay between structure and agency (Delbridge & Edwards, 2013; Frederiksen & Kringelum, 2021), its empirical application in entrepreneurship research remains limited. Drawing on Archer’s (1995, 2003) morphogenetic approach, we show how diverse actors exercise reflexive and collective agency to activate and challenge the structural and cultural conditions within the EE.
We advance this literature by operationalising morphogenesis empirically and tracing systemic change as a temporally sequenced process. We show that a critical realist ontology helps explain how women’s agential responses can trigger structural and cultural elaboration even under conditions of persistent constraint. Central to our contribution is the identification of tensions and empirically observable signals of morphogenetic potential, which enable us to trace how systemic change becomes visible. By specifying how signals emerge through partial and uneven developments, we extend Archer’s (2003) morphogenetic framework beyond its conceptual formulation towards a more operational and process-sensitive account. In doing so, we show how different phases of morphogenesis can be empirically reconstructed through distinct forms of evidence and how conditioning, interaction, and elaboration interact over time. This approach responds to calls for more empirically grounded applications of critical realism in organisation and management research (Frederiksen & Kringelum, 2021) and aligns with Whetten’s (1989) call for theoretical contributions that extend, rather than merely reaffirm, existing theory.
Future Research Avenues
Our study points towards numerous promising avenues for future research. Reflexivity is recognised as a central trigger for social interaction and systemic change (Tuominen & Lehtonen, 2018). Building on Archer’s (2003) emphasis on how different reflexive modes condition courses of action, future work could examine how women entrepreneurs adopt or shift among communicative, autonomous, meta-reflexive, and fractured modes and how these processes connect to collective mobilisation (Archer, 2003). Approaches such as narrative inquiry, phenomenology, or diary studies may be particularly well suited to capturing these dynamics.
Further research could also interrogate the internal dynamics of bonding and bridging. While our findings illustrate their importance for collective mobilisation, less is known about how power asymmetries and boundary spanners shape women’s communities, including who gains visibility and whose interests prevail (Villeséche & Josserand, 2017; Villeséche et al., 2022). Examining these dynamics would shed light on how solidarity can both enable and constrain the sense of belonging to such groups. Greater attention to intersectional dimensions, such as how race/ethnicity, religion, age, disability, or sexual orientation shape coalition-building, would deepen understanding of how collective action unfolds across diverse positionalities (Crenshaw, 2013) and potentially reveal alternative pathways to inclusivity in the EE.
Context also matters (Welter, 2011). The contextual peculiarities of Tel Aviv, although providing fertile ground for mobilisation, might limit generalisability. Comparative studies across different institutional and cultural settings could clarify the extent to which our findings are transferable across varied societal and institutional settings, and how different cultural and institutional contexts shape the possibilities for systemic change.
Finally, although a critical realist perspective suggests that new structural and cultural conditions emerge following each morphogenetic cycle (Archer, 1995, 2003), our study could not fully capture these dynamics. While we traced significant shifts in gender inclusivity in the EE, these processes are inherently long-term and iterative. Longitudinal research could follow actors across multiple morphogenetic cycles by revisiting the empirical context every 5 years. Such work could also explore if and how gender inclusivity in the EE is consolidated or eroded over time, and how new structural and cultural arrangements may produce contradictions or exclusions that shape subsequent cycles of change. Additionally, it could investigate if crises have a positive or negative impact on these developments.
Implications for Policy and Practice
Our findings suggest that advancing gender inclusivity in an EE requires moving beyond individualised interventions towards supporting women’s collective mobilisation, especially bridging efforts. Interventions centred on individualised, performance-driven processes of self-realisation risk what Villesèche et al. (2017) described as an ‘undoing of feminism’, that is, undermining ‘the feminist movement of collective action’ (p. 1904), which our findings show to be central to activating structural and cultural elaboration. Grassroots, women-led networks in Tel Aviv played a central role in connecting entrepreneurs with VCs, incubators/accelerators, and government agencies, enabling strategic collaborations and advocacy. Supporting such community-driven initiatives, whether through targeted funding, recognition, or infrastructure, may help strengthen the EE’s relational foundations and broaden participation in entrepreneurship.
Our findings further highlight that the women themselves played a visible role in shaping the discourse around gender inclusivity within the EE. Through advocacy, visibility campaigns, and cross-sectoral engagement, they reframed inclusivity as both social responsibility and economic imperative. Yet, uneven belonging within women-led communities also illustrates that collective mobilisation can reproduce hierarchies, particularly when leadership is concentrated among already empowered women. For policymakers and practitioners, this highlights the need not only to expand women’s participation in the EE but also to interrogate which individuals are most supported, whose voices are amplified, and whose voices remain marginalised.
Conclusion
In sum, our study shows that gender inclusivity in EEs cannot be achieved by adding parallel support structures for women but requires transforming the mainstream practices that define who counts as an entrepreneur. Efforts to support women through special initiatives may provide important resources in the short term, but they cannot substitute for systemic change in the long term and may inadvertently reinforce perceptions of second-tier participation. Advancing gender inclusivity, therefore, requires institutionalisation of equality: EE actors need to take shared responsibility for reshaping norms, evaluative criteria, and resource allocation within the mainstream. Such transformation is collective, ongoing, but fragile, and demands sustained commitment across the EE to ensure that progress is not only achieved, but maintained.
Footnotes
Appendix
Secondary Data Sources.
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|---|---|
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| SD6 | OECD (2010). OECD Reviews of Labour Market and Social Policies: Israel.https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/oecd-reviews-of-labour-market-and-social-policies-israel_9789264079267-en.html |
| SD7 | The Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (2013). Women and Men in Israel 1990-2011.https://www.cbs.gov.il/en/Statistical/mw2013_e.pdf |
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| SD31 | Samet, L., & Manela, M. (2020, November 23). Israel named by Mastercard as the best country for women entrepreneurs. CTech. https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0%2C7340%2CL-3875511%2C00.html |
| SD32 | Israel Innovation Authority (2025). The Israel Innovation Authority’s Activities to Promote Gender Equality in High-Tech.https://innovationisrael.org.il/en/report/activities-to-promote-genderequality-in-high-tech/ |
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Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the editor and reviewers for their valuable and constructive feedback, as well as for the feedback received at the ETP workshop ‘Inclusive or Exclusive? Diversity and Inclusion in Entrepreneurial Ecosystems Research’, the ACERE Conference 2025, and the Academy of Management Conference 2025.
Ethical Considerations
This study involved human participants, and all procedures were conducted following the ethics guidelines of the authors’ affiliated institutions.
Consent to Participate
Written informed consent was obtained from all interview participants following institutional ethics guidelines.
Consent for Publication
Written informed consent includes publication permission obtained from all interview participants following institutional ethics guidelines.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Grant number: FKZ: 13FH098KX1, 2023).
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Data Availability Statement
Interview data are not publicly available due to privacy concerns.