Abstract
This book presents a collection of 17 chapters, written by 29 researchers who develop their activity in 11 countries (Australia, Canada, Finland, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Slovenia, Sweden, the UK and USA). The aim of this volume is to offer a global vision of women entrepreneurs to understand the situation and challenges which their firms confront in order to grow in a global environment.
The book is presented in two parts: ‘Contextual Factors’ and ‘Growth Strategies and Facilitators’ in relation to women-owned firms. The chapters are based in different theoretical perspectives and methodologies, generating diverse empirical contributions. The first part includes seven chapters about the contextual factors in the growth of firms led by women. Among these the chapters discuss dynamics with respect to the quantity and quality of self-employment (defined as the ability to create jobs) of men and women in Europe (Cowling, Chapter 2); the reality that gender and entrepreneurship are social constructions (Alsos et al., Chapter 3); the larger profitability of firms managed by women, which justifies fostering their access to overcome barriers to executive positions and boards, even in equalitarian societies such as Finland (Kotiranta et al., Chapter 4); a comparison of the effect of formal and informal institutions in female entrepreneurial activity in two different contexts: market economy and economy in transition (Treanor and Henry, Chapter 5); an analysis from an institutional perspective of the different layers of embeddedness – political, sociocultural and cognitive – of female entrepreneurship in a transition economy, taking into account women’s agency (Welter and Smallbone, Chapter 6); the empowerment of home-based immigrant women through their work for native women entrepreneurs (Al-Dajani and Carter, Chapter 7) and the heterogeneity of women with regards to their qualification; how maternity and partners’ self-employment motivates them and how family policies in Europe and the USA influence female entrepreneurship (Tonoyan et al., Chapter 8).
The second part presents nine chapters justifying their grouping by the fact that they deal with growth strategies and facilitators for women-owned businesses. The first chapter in this part is focused on strategies at the individual and couple level for the conciliation of work and family, either facilitating or restricting business growth (Jennings et al., Chapter 9). Other chapters compare male and female business activities in terms of available resources: human, social, symbolic and financial capital (Shaw et al., Chapter 10), noting also how these resources, in particular social networks, may evolve at different stages of the firm (Klyver and Terjesen, Chapter 12); how the internal network of employees can be an important and underused network for business owners of both sexes (Farr-Wharton and Brunetto, Chapter 13); and how women can benefit from having a mentor in their network because it creates greater perceived self-efficacy and a better business outcome, in particular in Russia’s emerging market (Kickul et al., Chapter 16). Other articles relate to the study of business and technology, comparing men and women with regard to technological orientation and growth intention (Sirec et al., Chapter 17), or the perceptions and experiences of high-technology business owners (Hill et al., Chapter 11). Finally, two chapters make a case study on the process of firm creation by a woman in the fields of high technology within a business incubator (McAdam and Marlow, Chapter 14) and of social entrepreneurship in the health sector (Orser and Leck, Chapter 15).
Chapter 3 could have been presented as a framework for the entire book on how gender analysis explains the results of the experiences of women entrepreneurs. Capitalism has the family as its economic unit, contributing to recreation of the division of gender roles, according to which business creation belongs to the market and the male sphere. Thus, the social construction of capitalism and entrepreneurship puts women at a disadvantage. Since women entered the business field, they have had to convince the individuals with whom they interact that their practices comply with what is generally perceived as business practice if they want to attain legitimacy. However, the historical and dynamic construction of the definition of business competence is based on the description of the male business owner’s competence. Thus, although supporting female entrepreneurship is a goal of business support programmes, the results are disappointing because in addition to the structural and cultural division between genders (there is high occupational segregation), there are practices that counteract the policies of gender equality in the business field. On the one hand, these practices focus on the provision of resources which are assumed to be based on the difference, but this practice is not able per se to change the gender aspects of the business world; on the other hand, the implementation of certain family policies such as subsidised childcare and maternity leave, which favour that women remain in the public sector and that business activity is not an attractive career choice for them. The implications are that family policies should involve men in the private sphere at the same level as women, and that education policies should encourage young people to make professional choices that are not limited by tradition. At this point, they coincide with Cowling in Chapter 2, who points out that while the difference between men and women in the propensity to become self-employed and create jobs (quality of self-employment) has diminished substantially in the European Union in the decade between 1995 and 2005, the differences that persist relate to the occupational distribution of women. Therefore, he argues that policies aimed at increasing women’s participation in non-traditional occupations and sectors would help to narrow the difference, as well as policies that promote the perception of growth potential and recognition of opportunities.
Although this book is without doubt a useful and interesting contribution to the literature, it would have been interesting for the introduction to have had a more holistic vision, or that this could have been set out in a final chapter. The grouping of chapters seems very artificial, since each chapter reflects its own contextualisation of the concept of the women entrepreneur, how different socioeconomic factors produce different modes of inequality, and the different ways in which women use their agency to deal with these contexts. Each chapter reflects how the creation and management of women-owned businesses changes in different geographical contexts, depending on the particular micro-level, meso- and macro-environments.
It is important to highlight several important issues mentioned in some of the chapters of the book, to guide future research in this area. First, it is crucial to take into account national circumstances to explain the diversity of women’s gender experiences; since results in a country are not necessarily easy to compare with another geographical place which is considerably different (Chapter 3). A theoretical approach which can contribute to a dealing better with these contextual differences is the one proposed by Welter and Smallbone (Chapter 6), who propose the use of institutional theory by considering the different layers of embeddedness in which women’s entrepreneurial activity (cultural, social and cognitive) takes place, and is combined with an individual perspective that allows for women entrepreneurs’ adaptability and learning capacity. McAdam and Marlow (Chapter 14) also emphasise the consensus in previous literature about the persistent comparative disadvantage of women entrepreneurs who can use their agency when employing several strategies to deal with their particular situation which is causing them to experience subordination. Thus, a contextualised approach is important to overcome the criticism of women entrepreneurship research, that the inherent diversity among women entrepreneurs (and men) has not been captured yet (Chapter 9). However, there are studies which do not take into account the sectorial context of business owners (Chapters 16 and 17).
Second, as Hill et al. claim, studies on gender and business growth may not lead to conclusive results, mainly because some treat women and men as a homogeneous group, trying to generalise conclusions about their perceptions, attitudes and behaviours. In several chapters (8 and 9) the heterogeneity among women entrepreneurs becomes clear. However, the assumption seems to persist that men and women must be different, which rules out discussion on their similarities and the fact that the intra-group variation of women entrepreneurs can be greater than the variation between groups of both sexes. This leads to an exaggeration of differences when they are not actually observed (p. 239 and Chapter 17). For this reason, Hill et al. propose that future research should be designed to capture heterogeneity among women as well as their spatial and temporal context.
Third, researchers need to be careful to distinguish between sex-level analysis (variable containing the biological differences between men and women) and gender-level analysis (which refers to stereotypes and social patterns that culture builds on the basis of real or perceived differences between men and women) (Chapter 11). As Alsos et al. point out, in the most recent studies that apply a gender theoretical perspective, gender is interpreted as a social construction, ‘doing gender’ and ‘doing business’ are perceived as social practices, and women entrepreneurs are studied as a heterogeneous group. These studies assume that respondents’ answers may be induced by social expectations that differ according to gender (Chapter 11). However, in order to assert that this theoretical perspective should be the one applied, researchers should not only be interested in studying ‘the reality of women entrepreneurs built socially and virtually invisible’ (p. 191), but also in selecting methodology and research design in concordance with this theoretical perspective, which sometimes is not the case. Another questionable way in which some researchers explain the differences in results between men and women from feminist theory is to rely on the social feminism theory, arguing that ‘the results are consistent with this theory, which states that men and women differ due to the dissimilar processes of socialization which they experience’ (p. 339), without analysing those differences in socialisation within the study.
Since women entrepreneurship is an ‘enduring area of research’ (p. 136), having longevity in terms of need for both empirical and theoretical developments, I recommend this book as a useful resource for those interested in advancing a better understanding of the topic.