1 Introduction
Colette Henry and Kate Johnston
Female entrepreneurship, as a subject of academic research, has attracted a considerable amount of attention in recent years, and is fast becoming a primary focus for scholars, practitioners and governments alike. This phenomenal increase in gender specific entrepreneurship would appear to be due as much to the increase in entrepreneurship research activity overall (Fiet, 2000; Henry et al., 2003), as to the growing recognition that women now make a valuable contribution to national economies worldwide in terms of job creation, economic growth and wealth generation (Macaulay, 2003; Prowess Report, 2005; Centre for Womenâs Business Research, 2005). It is estimated that there are currently ten million self-employed women in Europe, with female-owned firms comprising between a quarter and a third of the business population worldwide (NFWBO, 1997; OECD, 2000; OECD, 2004). This, combined with the fact that twenty-first century women are now setting up the so-called ânew economy companiesâ, with success in high technology, life sciences and professional services (Carlassare, 2000; Langowitz, 2001; Ernst and Young, 2005), has led to women becoming important agents of economic and social change.
Female entrepreneurs often provide innovative and new solutions to organizational problems and, because they tend to be well educated and experienced (Maysami and Goby, 1999; Carter, 2005) are now, in response to the impenetrable glass ceiling, trading successful corporate careers for more exciting and less discriminatory entrepreneurial endeavours (Hansard, 1990; Mattis, 2000). It would appear that female entrepreneurship is well and truly in vogue!
But despite the impact that female entrepreneurs have in terms of economic activity and new job creation, the role of female entrepreneurs is often undervalued and underplayed. Women still have an alarmingly poor share in the new venture creation market and, compared to their male counterparts, tend to start and manage their businesses differently, opting for unconventional industries, mainly in the services sector (Womenâs Unit, 2001; Carter et al., 2001; Orhan and Scott, 2001; Forson and Ăzbilgin, 2003). Furthermore, according to the literature, women entrepreneurs are both risk and debt averse and, whether due to market failure or direct impediments, typically fail to attract the level of capital investment considered vital for major business growth. This despite the fact that women now make up half the European population (Womenâs Unit, 2001, as cited in Henry and Kennedy, 2003:205).
While commentators have, for the most part, sought to emphasize the particular difficulties associated with female entrepreneurship, the specific differences associated with women entrepreneurs and how they contrast with their male counterparts have received less attention from the academic community. Women behave differently from men, and their entrepreneurial endeavours reflect this. However, the valuable contribution that gender can make in terms of stimulating economic progress, providing innovative solutions to existing problems and exploiting new opportunities needs to be recognized. Rigorous research which offers insights into the practice of female entrepreneurship and provides practical examples of successful initiatives, can serve as a powerful tool for effecting change.
This book aims to advance understanding and effect real change in the field of female entrepreneurship in a number of strategic ways. First, it aims to promote the study of female entrepreneurship as an issue capable of separate and detailed analysis, thereby facilitating its development as an academic discipline in its own right. Second, by examining a number of pertinent themes which embed the female entrepreneurship literature, the book uncovers the nature of women entrepreneurs; their characteristics, their behaviour patterns and the challenges they face as they manoeuvre through the new venture creation process. Third, by examining female entrepreneurship in different country contexts, and by identifying some successful initiatives which have been specifically designed to encourage more women to participate in new venture creation, the book aims to inform educators, trainers and policy makers about what can be done to effectively promote female entrepreneurship at local and national level.
Accepting that differences exist in the nature of female entrepreneurship in different countries, as well as in different economic and social contexts, the editors have adopted a strong international perspective in their choice of material. This research monograph presents a collection of edited, research-based contributions from leading international scholars and researchers within the field of female entrepreneurship. The chapters that make up this volume combine the theoretical with the empirical to offer valuable insights into the very essence of female entrepreneurship.
Following this introductory chapter, the monograph is divided into two parts: Part I deals with our understanding of female entrepreneurship and contains five, mainly empirically-based, chapters, each exploring a pertinent aspect of the current research agenda in this field. Part II considers the promotion of female entrepreneurship and contains four chapters, with a mixture of empirically and experientially-based contributions which aim to identify and share good practice in promoting female entrepreneurs. A Conclusions chapter (Chapter 11) reviews the contributions in the context of what can and should be done to encourage and promote female entrepreneurship.
In Chapter 2, Sara Carter and Susan Marlow lay the foundation for the monograph by reviewing the existing literature on female entrepreneurship and highlighting the key themes to emerge from the early 1980s and into the new millennium and beyond. The characteristics and motivations of female entrepreneurs, their start-up patterns and resources, their management style and the various constraints they face are all considered by the authors. The complex, and sometimes controversial issues concerning access to finance, growth and performance are also examined. The authors illustrate how research on female entrepreneurship has not only expanded but matured in recent years, with much of the contemporary literature on entrepreneurship and new venture creation now more sensitive to the nuances of gender.
In Chapter 3, John Watson and Rick Newby further develop some of the particular nuances of gender discussed in the previous chapter by focusing on the differences in the goals of owner-operated small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The authors argue that traditionally masculine values and concepts have tended to dominate the management and organization literature and, as a consequence, such concepts have influenced our thinking on business success and performance. This in turn has impacted upon studies which consider the differences between male- and female-led SMEs. While the literature has suggested that male entrepreneurs outperform their female counterparts, there is evidence to suggest that there are considerable sex-based differences in both the desire for and achievement of business growth. Thus, Watson and Newby question the validity of using traditional âhardâ economic measures alone to assess and contrast the performance of female- and male-led firms. Their study, which involved 474 male and 137 female SME ownerâoperators in Western Australia, argues that future SME studies which seek to examine the impact of gender might be better served by the use of masculinity and femininity scores, rather than biological sex.
The issue of attitudes towards entrepreneurship is examined in Chapter 4 by Shirley-Ann Hazlett, Joan Henderson, Frances Hill and Claire Leitch. The authors explore the differences in attitudes towards entrepreneurship among female and male students, based on a sample of 596 undergraduates, across a variety of business related subjects. The chapter reports on the first part of a three-year longitudinal study to assess studentsâ understanding and perceptions of, as well as their attitudes towards, self-employment and new venture creation. The authors report that the females in the study appeared to place considerable value on networking, were more likely than men to perceive risk as a barrier to starting a business and that considerably fewer men than women perceived not having the necessary business skills as a potential barrier. The study also found that, overall, female students are less confident about their entrepreneurial abilities than their male counterparts. The authors conclude that, in the absence of further data, there is a need to tailor educational curricula to raise the total entrepreneurial activity particularly for female students at third level.
In Chapter 5, the theme of the general perception of female entrepreneurship is explored in greater depth by Elisabet Ljunggren and Gry Agnete Alsos. In their study, the authors focus on the discourse in newspapers and the different treatment afforded to male and female entrepreneurs in the Norwegian media to explore how media coverage can significantly influence societyâs perception of women entrepreneurs overall. Using discourse analysis based on 117 newspaper articles in leading business papers, the authors demonstrate that current media discourse on entrepreneurs is highly masculine in nature. When portrayed in the media, male entrepreneurs are strongly associated with risk-taking behaviour, stock market involvement, ambitious goals, and are representative of strong, high growth firms. In contrast, female entrepreneurs are described in terms of their personal characteristics, being motivated by lifestyle, often having other âsoftâ goals such as a caring attitude and as individuals who have a life outside that of an entrepreneur. Echoing Watson and Newbyâs chapter, the authors conclude that the male portrayal of an entrepreneur is very much the ânormâ, with the female entrepreneur considered as the âotherâ or something different, which is, unfortunately, sometimes perceived as something âsubordinateâ, contributing something less than their male equivalents.
Chapter 6 explores the networking behaviour of female entrepreneurs at the start-up and growth stages of the new venture creation process. The role and importance of networking, as well as the different types of networking approaches adopted at the various stages of the business life cycle, are discussed. Consideration is also given to how the effectiveness of women entrepreneursâ networking behaviour can be improved. Based on research from a pilot study, the chapter authors â Pauric McGowan and Alison Hampton â develop a tentative model of the networking practices of female-owned SMEs. Their study illustrates how the length of time a female entrepreneur is in business impacts on her level of knowledge and confidence, thus affecting her networking style and abilities.
Having focused on understanding the very nature of female entrepreneurship by reviewing extant trends in the literature worldwide, exploring the differences between the goals of male- and female-led SMEs in Western Australia, assessing the attitudes towards entrepreneurship among male and female undergraduates in Northern Ireland, reviewing the portrayal of female entrepreneurs in the Norwegian business media and evaluating the evolving networking behaviour of female entrepreneurs, Part II of the monograph shifts the focus to what can actually be done to encourage more women into new venture creation.
Chapter 7, by Clare Brindley, lays the foundation for Part II by considering the various barriers women entrepreneurs face in the new venture creation process. In this regard, risk is platformed as a key barrier which, according to the author, significantly impacts on the ability of women entrepreneurs to gain access to social supports, build networks and access finance. While Brindley reiterates the point that women are not a homogeneous group, her discussion of the relevant themes from the literature serves to remind us that women behave differently from men. Quite simply, the fact that success for self-employed women is not solely related to finance but can also mean the effective maintenance of home/work balance, suggests that women will remain disadvantaged as this view of success does not fit with conventional thinking. The author argues that there is a need to remove or reduce the barriers hindering women in their efforts to become self-employed. She calls for specific initiatives to be introduced to address the âcomplex system of interacting motivationsâ that prevent women from entering the world of entrepreneurship in greater numbers.
Picking up on the concept of finance as a key barrier to female entrepreneurship, Chapter 8, by Candida G. Brush, Nancy M. Carter, Elizabeth J. Gatewood, Patricia G. Greene and Myra M. Hart, considers womenâs financial strategies for growth. The authors suggest that women are typically disadvantaged when starting a business because they have been unable to accumulate savings similar to their male counterparts, due to having lower incomes. As such, men and women employ different financing strategies and this can affect women entrepreneursâ ability to grow their business. From their study of ninety-two women entrepreneurs who had applied to Springboard 2000 Venture Forums in Silicon Valley and the Mid-Atlantic, Brush et al. highlighted a range of financing strategies. The study showed that those with equity funding were significantly more likely to use bootstrapping to fund product development. The authors conclude that bootstrapping as a financing strategy can be highly effective in helping to position the business for external equity investment.
Chapter 9, by Ita Richardson and Briga Hynes, discusses the lack of women in both technical employment and entrepreneurship. While their research supports the literature in suggesting that a lack of women studying technical disciplines has a direct impact on the number of technology-based female entrepreneurs, their study traces the root of the problem back to the secondary education system. Based on the experiences of the University of Limerick in Ireland, three practical initiatives are examined which were designed to encourage more women to study engineering, science and technology based subjects and to consider self-employment as a viable career option. The simple structures of the initiatives render them valuable tools for positively impacting on womenâs technical entrepreneurship, and make them capable of being transferred into virtually any social or economic climate.
In Chapter 10, Petra Puechner and Christine Diegelmann report on an international study conducted by the ProWomEn network, an EU initiative established in 2001 to promote women entrepreneurs. The authors describe the work of the ProWomEn project, outline the international project team membership and explain the project objectives. The research undertaken by the ProWomEn team considered the state of female entrepreneurship across a range of European countries in an effort to gather data on the varying levels of female entrepreneurial activity and, more specifically, to identify good practice examples in the promotion of female entrepreneurship. Several examples of good practice are mentioned by the authors, and four speci...
