Recursive territories: A bibliometric diagnosis and a multilevel framework for women's entrepreneurship and territorial development

Abstract

Women's entrepreneurship is widely credited with strengthening the resilience of peripheral, resource-constrained territories, yet the literature remains split between an economic paradigm (financial inputs, growth outcomes) and an institutional paradigm (patriarchal norms, institutional voids). This paper tests that diagnosis empirically on a single-database Scopus corpus of 15,108 English-language articles and reviews (2007-2026, with 2026 only partially covered), combining bibliometric mapping with qualitative coding of its most influential documents (86% precision, κ = 0.78). Contrary to the assumed split, the two vocabularies already co-occur heavily within a single, polarised conceptual space (38.74% and 17.73% of inertia on its two dimensions): the true latent fracture instead separates a macro/meso structural pole from a micro, individual/cognitive pole. Building on this diagnosis and on structuration theory, we propose a recursive three-level framework (micro agency, meso intermediaries, macro institutions) in which territory is the relational context that makes these mechanisms mutually observable, not a fourth, additive level. The framework captures a recursive interplay neither prior paradigm addresses alone, with implications for regional development policy that should be read cautiously given the corpus's Global North centred authorship and collaboration, pending cross-regional replication.

Classification JEL: L26, L31, F63, O1, Q01, R11.

Paper type: Theoretical Research.