The dearth of daughter successors in family businesses: Gendered norms, blindness to possibility, and invisibility

Statistics reveal a dearth of daughters among successors of family business owners. In one of very few empirical studies on the subject of daughters who do not follow in the footsteps of their entrepreneurial fathers, we examined factors that may contribute to daughters’ self-assessments of succession. Findings reveal that daughters’ own blindness to the possibility of succession, often resulting from automatically activated gender norms, impedes their ascendancy. Interviews with daughters who did not pursue executive positions with decision making responsibilities in their family firms, as well as both sons and daughters who did, indicate that daughters may not deliberately consider succession until a critical event motivates them to do so. Additionally, parental support and mentoring for leadership are seen to facilitate daughter succession.