The Quest for Invisibility: Female Entrepreneurs and the Masculine Norm of Entrepreneurship

The emphasis in research on female entrepreneurship remains focused on the impact of gender on women’s experience of business ownership, often demonstrated through comparisons of male and female entrepreneurs. By contrast, this article explores the differences and divisions between women business owners who are silent about gender issues and those who are not. The main data drawn on in the article are e‐mails conducted through a web‐based entrepreneurial network set up to promote and support women in business, supplemented with interview material derived from an interview study of 19 women business owners. By considering the way in which some women business owners not only treat entrepreneurship as gender‐neutral, but also seek to conceal its gendered nature, we can see how some female entrepreneurs are trying to avoid being identified as different from the masculine norm of entrepreneurship.     

Performance and Performativity: Undoing Fictions of Women Business Owners

This article explores the representation of women small business owners in three contemporary novels; Chocolat, The Shipping News and Back When We Were Grownups. The primary contribution is to demonstrate how fiction can both challenge and collude in dominant constructions of entrepreneurship, which is more generally gendered as male and masculine. Judith Butler's thinking on performativity with regard to gender and sexual desire is applied to women's identities and extended to include their behaviour as entrepreneurs. The article demonstrates that these novels both ‘do’ and ‘undo’ gender and business ownership. They portray women who are successful in business while displaying culturally accepted norms of femininity but who are set apart from other female characters. However, their partial and conflictual identification with norms of gender and entrepreneurship could lead a reader to question those norms and through the undoing of the protagonists, the novels offer alternative performances and performativities of doing gender and of doing business.     

Profiling a New Generation of Female Small Business Owners in New Zealand: Networking,Mentoring and Growth

The contribution of female small business owners to economic development in Western developed countries such as New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, is generally under–researched and traditionally grounded in male norms. Increasingly policy–makers acknowledge that in countries like New Zealand where 85% of business employs five or less people, small business offers the greatest employment potential. Not enough is known, though, about the growth orientation and characteristics of female small business owners. This article reports findings from the largest empirical study of small business undertaken in New Zealand and provides inter–gender comparison between male and female small business owners and for intra–gender contrast between networked female small business owners and women who did not belong to a business network. The results showed that the networked women, who were in the main better educated and more affiliative by nature, were more expansionist than both other female small business owners and men. The networked women were also more likely to have a business mentor. The findings confound earlier research suggesting women are less growth–orientated and wish only to satisfy intrinsic needs from their businesses. The article concludes by discussing the need to acknowledge the heterogeneity of female small business and what this means for policy–makers when assessing their socio–economic potential.     

Adjustment Strategy Use in Minority Family Businesses: Differences Across Gender

The objectives of this study were to explore the adjustment strategies employed by minority female owners of small family firms and to compare their use of adjustment strategies with those of their male counterparts. There were significant gender differences in the adoption of adjustment strategies among minority-owned family firms. The major findings of this study suggest that minority female business owners were more likely to reallocate family resources to help with business tasks and were more likely to intertwine both tasks than minority male business owners when demands were particularly great for the family or the firm. In addition, compared to male business owners, a relatively higher proportion of female business owners used volunteer help without pay during hectic times. Implications for business consultants and educators working with minority business owners are discussed.     

The Search for an Authentic Entrepreneurial Identity: Difference and Professionalism among Women Business Owners

This article contributes to the recent stream of research on enterprise and identity by exploring the authenticity‐driven identity work of a group of women business owners. While previous research has highlighted the effort some female business owners put into fitting in with the masculine identity of the entrepreneur, this article focuses on those women who self‐consciously adopt a feminized entrepreneurial identity as a means of being ‘who I really am’ in a business context. Nevertheless, despite their expressed commitment to a feminized identity, the article highlights their incorporation of a contrasting position or antagonism in this authenticity‐driven endeavour. Drawing on Charme's notion of existential authenticity, which places an emphasis on the cultural, historical, political, economic and physical limits to being ‘true to oneself’, the article shows how the situated nature of women's search for an authentically driven entrepreneurial identity means that they draw on a feminized discourse of difference and a contrasting masculine discourse of professionalism in their identity construction labours.     

The Changing Experience of Australian Female Entrepreneurs

The study of female entrepreneurship is a dynamic field, with more women than men engaging in self‐employment in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Prior research in this field has identified a series of factors which characterize entrepreneurs. This paper examines the extent to which the experiences of Australian women entrepreneurs are reflected in the prior research. In particular, emphasis is placed on whether the personal characteristics, educational levels, motivations for starting business and resource acquisition behaviour of contemporary Australian women entrepreneurs are reflected in the prior research. While many of the key findings of prior research were found to describe accurately the experience of Australian women entrepreneurs, three new factors have been identified. First, Australian women entrepreneurs have increasingly come from business education backgrounds compared to the predominantly liberal arts backgrounds reported elsewhere. Second, the reasons for establishing small business differ insofar as they represent a greater proportion of general business needs as well as personal internal needs. Third, Australian women entrepreneurs are moving away from traditional ’female industries‘ into sectors identified as ’male industries‘ such as manufacturing. Overall, Australian women entrepreneurs demonstrate similarities in their identifying characteristics; however, significant shifts are occurring in their behaviours.     

Conforming to and Resisting Dominant Gender Norms: How Male and Female Nursing Students Do and Undo Gender

Much existing research has shown that men are able to construct and enact masculine identities in female‐dominated occupational contexts. However, few studies have examined the experiences of both men and women in these occupations. Furthermore, few studies attend to how men and women in these occupations both conform to and resist gender norms. In this study, I draw on the undoing gender frameworks developed by Deutsch and Butler to address the limitations mentioned above. Most notably, this study attends to the ways in which male and female nursing students do gender by conforming to dominant gender norms, as well as undo gender by resisting these norms. The main contribution of this study is thus to show the multiple ways through which gender can be done and undone in the professional training of both male and female nurses. The results of this study demonstrate the importance of attending to both women and men in research on female‐dominated occupations and of examining both similarities and differences in the gender performances of men and women.     

Small Business Success in Rural Communities: Explaining the Sex Gap*

Abstract Building on previous theory and research, we propose a “structural relational” view of the sex gap in small business success. Our findings, based on analyses of data from 423 small business owners in Iowa, show support for our model and suggest that links between owners, social relational processes, business structure, and small business success operate differently depending on the industry location of the business and the owner's sex. Results also indicate that the business owner's sex has direct and indirect effects on business success. This finding suggests that social relations, organizations, and institutions are all gendered in ways that influence the sex gap in sales, but that further research is needed to more fully explain sex differences in small business success. We discuss these and other findings in terms of their theoretical and practical implications, and suggest directions for future research.     

Gender and the Seriousness of Assaults on Intimate Partners and Other Victims

We examine the ways in which assaults committed by male intimate partners are more serious than assaults committed by female partners and whether these differences reflect gender differences in offending and victimization generally. Analyses of the National Violence Against Women and Men Survey (N =6,480) show that, in general, gender effects do not depend on the victim's relationship to the offender. Regardless of their relationship (a) men cause more injuries; (b) women suffer more injuries although their injuries tend to be less severe; (c) victims are more fearful of male offenders but only if the offenders are unarmed; and (d) men are particularly likely to precipitate assaults by other men, not their female partners. Violent husbands do assault with particularly high frequency but so do women who assault family members.     

Do Differences Matter?

Abstract

Have women members of Congress made a difference? A handful of studies have answered this “so what” question by looking for differences between male and female legislators. We build on previous research and propose an additional way of answering this question. If women members are making a difference, then they should be changing how men behave in Congress. Specifically, if women members are making a difference, then they should be changing how their male colleagues debate the issues. We content-analyze each House floor debate on the Hyde Amendment to see if women are changing how men debate the abortion issue. We find that men and women frame the abortion debate differently, and we find some evidence that women members of Congress have shifted the debate over time to focus less on the morality of abortion and more on the health of the pregnant women. We hope our research stimulates further work that not only looks for differences between men and women legislators, but also looks to see if the differences cause legislatures to change the way they do business.     

Towards a typology of female entrepreneurs

This paper reviews some of the employment problems faced by women and examines how these difficulties might be overcome through entrepreneurship. However, recent empirical work by Goffee and Scase suggests that it is inappropriate to speak of ‘the’ female entrepreneur: there are different types of female business proprietors. Based on an empirical study of 34 aspiring female proprietors, the authors investigate the validity of Goffee and Scase's assertions. Results suggest that there are indeed different types of female entrepreneur, and that while there are some similarities between the typology developed in this paper and that presented by Goffee and Scase, there are also significant differences between them. Possible policy implications of the findings are discussed.     

Business ownership and women's subordination: a preliminary study of female proprietors

Over recent years some sociological attention has been devoted to the position of women in the labour market and in the domestic sphere. However, the study of women as business proprietors has been almost entirely neglected.¹ This is a serious omission because the ownership of small businesses could become an increasingly important area for female economic achievement within ‘no-growth’ industrial economies.² Further, as trends in the United States would suggest, female proprietorship may have important implications for developments within the women's movement.³ On the basis of interviews with a small number of women business owners, we explore the personal motives for and consequences of proprietorship. We suggest that although women may be compared to many other subordinate groups in their expectations of the gains to be derived from proprietorship they encounter, as women, quite distinct experiences and difficulties. Business ownership, then, does not offer a straightforward solution to women's subordination. Further, claims that female proprietorship merely incorporates a minority of women to the disregard of the majority appears, on the basis of our evidence, to be misleading.     

Work and Employment in Small Businesses: Perpetuating and Challenging Gender Traditions

More and more women and men are becoming dependent on some form of small business activity for all or part of their livelihoods but there is little research offering insight into gender and working practices in small businesses. In this article we assess some theoretical approaches and discuss these against an empirical investigation of micro-firms run by women, men and mixed sex partnerships. In the ‘entrepreneurship’ literature, with its emphasis on the individual business owner, we find little guidance. We argue that in the ‘modern’ micro-business, family and work are brought into proximity as in the ‘in between’ organizational form described by Weber. The celebrated ‘flexibility’ of small firms often involves the reproduction within modernity of seemingly pre-modern practices in household organization and gender divisions of labour. This is true in the Britain of the 1990s in a growing business sector normally associated neither with tradition nor with the family. Tradition, however, is never automatic or uncontested in a ‘post-traditional society’. A minority of women and men in micro-enterprises actively resist traditional solutions and even traditional imagery of male and female behaviour. For this small group alone new economic conditions seem to bring new freedom.     

Multiple business ownership in the farm sector: assessing the enterprise and employment contributions of farmers in Cambridgeshire

Multiple business ownership has become an important theme within the small firms research literature. While early studies emphasised its role in reducing business risk, more recently portfolio entrepreneurship has been recognised as an important growth strategy, particularly in sectors where economies of scale can be achieved at a relatively low level. Research studies specifically examining multiple business ownership are still scarce, but the parallels between portfolio entrepreneurship in non-farm sectors and farm pluriactivity have been noted. Although pluriactivity has been subject to extensive investigation in recent years, analysis has generally focused on farm-centred diversification, rather than the wider entrepreneurial activities of the farmer. Using a survey of nearly 300 farm owners in Cambridgeshire, this exploratory study analyses the incidence of portfolio entrepreneurship in the farm sector and assesses its contribution to enterprise and employment creation. The results demonstrate that a core of farmers have multiple business interests and that these additional business activities make a substantial contribution to both numbers of enterprises and employment creation. While previous studies of pluriactivity have generally used the farm business as the main unit of analysis, it is argued that including the wider business activities of the farm owner enables a more precise estimation of the total contribution of farmers to rural economic development.     

WHERE ARE THE WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS? BUSINESS OWNERSHIP GROWTH BY GENDER ACROSS THE AMERICAN URBAN LANDSCAPE

This study identifies the determinants of growth for male and female business ownership in a subset of U.S. counties. The results indicate that there are important characteristic and behavioral differences between the male and female populations in each county that affect regional changes in business ownership for each gender. In particular, the education level of males and females as well as the local family structure impact the propensity for firms owned by each gender differently. A Blinder‐Oaxaca type decomposition, a novel approach in the context of regional outcomes, demonstrates that although the effect of characteristic differences is larger, the behavioral differences are key to narrowing the gender disparity in business ownership. (JEL L26, R2, R3)     

Earnings and Expenditures on Household Services in Married and Cohabiting Unions

Despite the rise in women’s paid employment, little is known about how women and their partners allocate money to outsource domestic tasks, especially in unmarried unions. Tobit analyses of 6,170 married and cohabiting couples in the 1998 Consumer Expenditure Survey test hypotheses that recognize gender inequality between partners, gender typing of household tasks, and differences between cohabitation and marriage. Women’s earned income is more important than men’s for spending on female tasks. Men’s earnings are not more important for male tasks, but the earnings of married men are more strongly linked to expenditures on female tasks than are the earnings of cohabiting men. The research indicates that working women leverage their earnings to reduce their domestic burden through outsourcing.     

Women's entrepreneurship,neoliberalism and economic justice in the postfeminist era: A discourse analysis of policy change in Sweden

Since the early 1990s, there has been investment in women's entrepreneurship policy (WEP) in Sweden, which continued until 2015. During the same period, Sweden assumed neoliberal policies that profoundly changed the position of women within the world of work and business. The goals for WEP changed as a result, from entrepreneurship as a way to create a more equal society, to the goal of unleashing women's entrepreneurial potential so they can contribute to economic growth. To better understand this shift we approach WEP as a neoliberal governmentality which offers women ‘entrepreneurial’ or ‘postfeminist’ subject positions. The analysis is inspired by political theorist Nancy Fraser who theorized the change as the displacement of socioeconomic redistribution in favour of cultural recognition, or identity politics. We use Fraser's concepts in a discourse analysis of Swedish WEP over two decades, identifying two distinct discourses and three discursive displacements. Whilst WEP initially gave precedence to a radical feminist discourse that called for women's collective action, this was replaced by a postfeminist neoliberal discourse that encouraged individual women to assume an entrepreneurial persona, start their own business, compete in the marketplace and contribute to economic growth. The result was the continued subordination of women business owners, but it also obscured or rendered structural problems/solutions, and collective feminist action, irrelevant.     

Small Business Success Among Men- and Women-Owned Firms in Rural Areas1

Abstract Rural women have difficulty finding good jobs. Ownership of small businesses offers an alternative but the sales and income of women-owned firms are significantly lower than those of men-owned firms. Compared with men, women owners are more likely to operate smaller and newer businesses; however, these differences do not completely account for the gap in gross sales between men- and women-owned businesses. The strongest influences on business success are firm size, corporate status, and industrial sector. Though significant, the owner's gender is less important than these organizational characteristics. The factors influencing success of small businesses generally are the same for men- and women-owned businesses. More research on business networks and the start-up phase of small businesses is necessary for a better understanding of the sources of gender differences in success.     

Exist or exit? Women business‐owners in Bangladesh during COVID‐19

Within the unique context of COVID‐19, this feminist research provides novel insights on how gender‐specific issues are articulated in the experiences of women concerning their small businesses in a patriarchal developing nation. Based on the interviews of women business‐owners in Bangladesh, this research reveals the diversified gendered experiences of women in private and public spheres in continuing their business operations during the pandemic period. It also unveils patriarchal practices regarding women's discontinuing or closing down ventures due to the COVID‐19 crisis. Thus, the research substantially advances the understanding on the influence of gender on women's continuing or discontinuing or even closing down their businesses in a highly patriarchal developing nation during the pandemic period. It further offers important suggestions for policy practitioners in supporting women business‐owners of patriarchal developing nations during the COVID‐19 pandemic.     

The complexities of friendship: exploring how gay men make sense of their workplace friendships with straight women

Despite the contemporary attention paid to the gay male–straight female friendship dyad within popular culture and a growing scholarly interest in male–female friendships, not enough is known about the friendship dynamics between gay men and straight women, particularly in the workplace. I draw upon qualitative findings from in‐depth interviews with 28 gay men employed in a range of work roles in the UK to document their existence and shed light on how gay men understand, value and give meaning to workplace friendships with women. Study findings reveal the paucity of textual cues and practices to direct the development and maintenance of these friendships. Overcoming this, study participants are shown to be inventive in their approach to doing friendship. As problematic as some friendship ties are for understanding differences along the lines of sexuality and gender, the opportunities for challenging heteronormative ways of relating in workplace friendship are regarded as more promising.