Stanley Cromie is senior lecturer in organisation theory at the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland. The study was undertaken to add to the literature on the female entrepreneur by using a model of entrepreneurial choice to discover why 34 women and 35 men chose to become business proprietors. Results indicated that both men and avoid unsatisfying jobs. In contrast men were more interested in making money while women expressed dissatisfaction with their job histories. Women with children women saw entrepreneurship as a means of overcoming barriers to career advancement. Both genders were poorly prepared for the task of new business founding and neither men nor women were forced into proprietorship through labour market pressures.
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