Gender and Small Business Management: The Case of Norway in the 1990s

Abstract

OLAV R. SPILLING IS WITH THE CENTRE FOR Industrial Development and Entrepreneurship, Norwegian School of Management, Sandvika, and Nina Gunnerud Berg is with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. The first is based on the Population Census, 1990 and provides representative data on self-employment and (self-reported) management positions in private as well as public businesses in the whole population. The second data set, from 1995, links data on all registered firm managers and board chairmen to data on firms recorded in the Central Register of Firms and Establishments. It provides comprehensive data on the share of male and female managers in various industries and size groups of companies. As far as self-employment is concerned, the data reveal a share of female self-employed of 25 per cent, which is comparable with the situation in other European countries, but below shares reported from the United States. However, the data reveal that self-employment has different meanings to men and women as female self-employment generally means to be in an economically more marginal position than is the situation for self-employed men. The data on business managers (top executives) reveal very small shares for women compared with men. Women managers are mainly in smaller firms, and even among these the share is rather small with, on average, about 16 per cent; for board chairmen the percentage is even smaller with about 10 per cent. The larger the firms, the smaller is the share of female managers, and they are virtually absent in the larger firms. When summarising the data, it turns out that businesses with female managers account for about 7 per cent of total private sector employment, and about 5 per cent of total turnover. Furthermore, the data reveal that to the extent women go into business as managers, they do so in sectors where women traditionally have a strong position in the labour market but even among these sectors very few have a majority of female managers. The general conclusion of this paper is that current research based on data on self-employment tends to give a too optimistic picture of the role of women in business. the vast majority of businesses managed by women are very small, and taking into account the 'weight' of their businesses, the role of women in business is still rather marginal.