WHO Gets to Lead, WHO Gets to Belong? Women’s Leadership in Austrian Exporting Smes

Ana Nestorovic, Stefanie Mayer and , Anett Hermann
WU Institute for Gender and Diversity

Abstract

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of the Austrian economy, driving internationalisation and digitalisation. Yet women remain markedly underrepresented in leadership and export-related decision-making roles. This paper asks: who gets to belong in the powerful spaces where export strategy is defined, and under what structural and cultural conditions? Drawing on Austria’s contribution to the WOMEX Regional Mapping Study, the paper combines a quantitative survey of exporting SMEs with ten in-depth interviews with women in senior export-related roles (owners, successors, corporate leaders, and founders). While the quantitative dataset is limited—reflecting the structural scarcity of women in such positions—it provides an important backdrop for a rich qualitative analysis informed by Role Congruity Theory and the Push–Pull Theory of Women’s Entrepreneurship. Findings show that women’s access to export leadership is shaped by intersecting constraints: conservative gender norms, insufficient childcare and full-day schooling, part-time traps, and male-dominated organisational cultures. These conditions restrict women’s mobility, delay career progression, and signal that they do not fully “belong” in strategic export spaces. At the same time, internationalisation can act as a counter-space of belonging: global markets sometimes offer more openness, recognition, and room for alternative leadership styles than domestic contexts. Many participants therefore construct belonging through entrepreneurship, family business succession, and transnational networks, rather than through formal corporate ladders. The paper contributes to critical debates on gender, power, and place by conceptualising export governance as a site where economic strategy and social (non)belonging are co-produced. It concludes with implications for policy and practice, arguing that addressing structural barriers to women’s export leadership is both a social justice imperative and a competitiveness strategy for highly internationalised SME economies

Presentation