Women Entrepreneur and Gender Issues

Abstract

Women's entrepreneurship is on the increase around the world. Women -owned businesses comprise between one -quarter and one-third of businesses in the formal economy, and probably play a greater role in the informal sector. Whatever their background, women of every continent is contributing to their local economic environment, and they are showing very encouraging signs of entrepreneurial spirit. Women's entrepreneurship needs to be studied separately for two main reasons. The first reason is that women's entrepreneurship has been recognized during the last decade as an important untapped source of economic growth. Women entrepreneurs create new jobs for themselves and others and by being different and also provide society with different solutions to management, organisation and business problems as well as to the exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities. However, they still represent a minority of all entrepreneurs. Thus there exists a market failure discriminating against women's possibility to become entrepreneurs and their possibility to become successful entrepreneurs. This market failure needs to be addressed by policy makers so that the economic potential of this group can be fully utilized. While without a doubt the economic impact of women is substantial, we still lack a reliable picture describing in detail that specific impact. The second reason is that the topic of women in entrepreneurship has been largely neglected both in society in general and in the social sciences. Not only have women lower participation rates in entrepreneurship than men but they also generally choose to start and manage firms in different industries than men tend to do. The industries (primarily retail, education and other service industries) chosen by women are often perceived as being less important to economic development and growth than high-technology and manufacturing. Furthermore, mainstream research, policies and programmes tend to be "men streamed" and too often do not take into account the specific needs of women entrepreneurs and would-be women entrepreneurs. As a consequence, equal opportunity between men and women from the perspective of entrepreneurship is still not a reality. In order for policy makers to address the situation the report makes a number of recommendations. Women in a business context are like European businesses in a global context: They have the best assets (skills, experience, products) but are very bad in promoting and marketing themselves. Importance rating of success factors by women showed that skills that women have "naturally" like soft skills (supportive leadership, intercultural skills) were rated much lower than those they consider rather difficult (decision-making, delegating, upward leadership). As the entrepreneurial process (the establishment of the firm and its possible growth) is assumed to be path dependent, initial financing and continued financing for growth become related issues. Hence, the outcome of the entrepreneurial process is sensitive to the effect of a wide range of initial conditions, but also to the contingent events in altering these conditions over time. Therefore, it is not enough to review the general conditions that affect women's entrepreneurship, but it is also necessary to review how these different conditions actually translate into different barriers women might meet when being engaged in the entrepreneurial process. This paper is divided into four different parts: general obstacles to women engaging in entrepreneurship (opportunity recognition and willingness to start firms); specific obstacles to start-ups (assembling necessary information, financial and human resources to start a firm); specific obstacles to managing a small firm; and specific obstacles to growing firms. Why is gender a development issue? "Women and men contribute to development in every sphere; whether it is their personal lives or society as a whole, they depend on each other. The more balanced gender relations are and the more closely men and women work together - and equality is a basic requirement for this - the greater chance to develop and to flourish."