Female Entrepreneurship and the New Venture Creation

An International Overview

Dafna Kariv

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136496073
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Entrepreneurship
• Index: Business

Women represent the fastest growing group of entrepreneurs today. Despite the enormous economic contributions of this group, female entrepreneurship remains under-explored and inadequately covered in academic literature.

Female Entrepreneurship and New Venture Creation aims to address this gap by shedding light on the unique aspects of female entrepreneurship. Tracing women's journey along the venture creation process, Kariv's book:

• highlights the creatively different ways in which women approach the entrepreneurial enterprise;
• takes into account different environmental and cultural constraints that impact female entrepreneurship;
• provides a theoretical framework for the venture creation process that is practical and broadly applicable;
• includes in-depth case studies drawn from contributors around the world.

This book captures the diversity of female entrepreneurship and provides a valuable synthesis of the insights that emerge from the stories of women entrepreneurs around the world. It will be a valuable resource for students of entrepreneurship, as well as professionals.

Part 1
Female Entrepreneurship

What Makes this Area Unique?

Part 1 focuses on:

• Recognizing the main themes from the literature on female entrepreneurship;
• Understanding the roles of social and cultural forces in women’s decision to become entrepreneurs;
• Drawing on the unique characteristics of women entrepreneurs, including human capital, social capital and family status, among others;
• Outlining women’s entrepreneurial motivations, aspirations and choices with respect to entrepreneurship;
• A familiarization with female entrepreneurship in emerging markets, established markets, and in the context of necessity-and opportunity-driven economies;
• This part includes chapters and case studies illustrating the female entrepreneurial realm, including the constraints and opportunities it encompasses, women’s motivations to embark on entrepreneurship, and a glimpse into female entrepreneurship in emerging economies such as those of the BRIC and MENA countries.

Part 1 of the book draws upon important themes from the literature on female entrepreneurship, which are presented via a practical, “down- to-earth” approach that includes examples of, and quotations from women entrepreneurs, followed by detailed case studies. The main themes discussed in this section are the social and cultural forces and pressures encountered by women that affect their decision to become entrepreneurs. These include, for example, the stereotyping of women entrepreneurs, discrimination against women in the labor market and a lack of relevant experience in entrepreneurship, but also women’s greater participation in the higher education system, a factor that fosters their participation in the entrepreneurial realm. The external forces that influence women’s entrepreneurial aspirations are considered, as is a global view of women’s roles in their respective societies and labor markets.

Another aspect addressed herein is women’s experiences in the labor market as a premise for their entrepreneurial choices: motivations, including a thorough look into the emerging BRIC markets in context of necessity- and opportunity-driven economies, and push-vs.-pull external factors.

1
Female Entrepreneurship

Constraints and Opportunities—A General Overview

Chapter Objectives

• Discussing the roles of country, culture, policies, and services in crafting and reflecting women’s and men’s attitudes toward female entrepreneurship;
• Detailing the micro-level and macro-level effects on women’s motivations to become entrepreneurs and on their aspirations to grow their new ventures;
• Learning and discussing the relevance of the feminist theories in female entrepreneurship; assessing the added value of each theory for an understanding of female entrepreneurship;
• Creating the drive to develop practical angles stemming from the feminist theories for female entrepreneurship;
• Understanding the differences between “sex” and “gender” and recognizing the contexts in which these have evolved;
• Exhibiting themes such as stereotyping, discrimination, inequality and regulations in the context of women in general, and women entrepreneurs in particular.

The different roles of men and women in society—in both the home and the labor market—and their changing nature in the past few decades, are presented and discussed, to familiarize the reader with the state of female employment around the world and the respective state of entrepreneurship.

In seeking explanations that account for these differences, both theoretical and practical examples are offered, and the macro and micro perspectives are introduced. Themes such as personal attributes relevant to entrepreneurship and family status (micro perspective) are presented along with social and cultural pressures (macro perspective), to demonstrate the complex situation that women entrepreneurs must tackle in their entrepreneurial course.

The theoretical, organizational framework of this chapter is based on theoretical approaches to feminism, which are broadly discussed, and several angles emerging from the feminist perspective are introduced.

The process of new venture creation originates from entrepreneurial activity; the way in which women handle new venture creation echoes the female-oriented motivations, activities and strategies that typify the new venture creation phase. While the area of female new venture creation has scarcely been studied, female entrepreneurship has been recognized as an important budding research area, albeit a largely untapped source of economic growth. Women entrepreneurs create new jobs, promote national and international economies, and provide society with inventive solutions that emerge from their entrepreneurial ventures and innovations. More importantly, women entrepreneurs introduce new and unique ways of tackling unexploited entrepreneurial opportunities and overcoming obstacles in the venture creation process, and implement their vision in a set of unique business practices. This distinctiveness, however, is somehow overlooked in research and practice; of the fields that have attracted entrepreneurship scholars over time, e.g., opportunity exploitation, sources of financing, venture capitalists’ practices and social networks, gender in the women entrepreneur’s quest has been, for the most part, treated as a component of “personal characteristics,” similar to age and educational attainment. By offering a general look into the venture creation process, the male perspective dominates the area of entrepreneurship, leaving the female perspective essentially unexploited (Ahl, 2006; Moore, 1990; Stevenson, 1990).

Female entrepreneurship, however, deserves special attention since a woman’s background is distinct and unique: the socialization path and social expectations faced by women, their distinct routines, i.e., the challenges and obstacles tackled by women entrepreneurs, have shaped their attitudes, thoughts and performance in their new venture creation process.

By disregarding women’s perspective, women’s performance remains blurred. The entrepreneurial paths which are more commonly followed by women to pursue opportunities, develop their ideas for a business or finance their ventures, for example, may appear ineffective to the male or “general” market. Women are not taken seriously as entrepreneurs, and any success in woman-led businesses is treated as the exception rather than the rule. The outcome is mirrored in the general approach toward female entrepreneurship, while entrepreneurship as a career path is considered more appropriate for men than for women.

Yet, the significant number of women entrepreneurs—inventors, founders, innovators and pioneers, among them Nobel Prize winners— proves that the creative, innovative, entrepreneurial path is diversified and can suit anyone, regardless of gender. By embracing the woman-oriented, entrepreneurial path, maintaining an open mind and accepting that there are different entrepreneurial paths, including female-oriented and male-oriented ones, the entrepreneurial field will benefit and be promoted (Boden & Nucci, 2000; Brush, 1992; Scheinberg & MacMillan, 1988; Shane, Kolvereid, & Westhead, 1991).

AN INTERNATIONAL VIEW

Scholars in female entrepreneurship and international entrepreneurship continue to disagree on the prevalence of gender or national culture in the new venture creation process. Most studies tackle gender by examining differences between female and male entrepreneurs. However, more evidence of country-level influences on the practices exhibited by women within the new venture creation process is required to deepen our understanding in this field.

Different questions addressing the underlying effects of the ecosystem’s intricacies on new venture creation processes spring to mind, e.g., social expectations of women in different societies, cultural norms regarding women’s independence in the labor market, including entrepreneurship, national policies, strategies, cultural and economic influences, regional support, policies supporting women entrepreneurs, and services developed to facilitate their entrepreneurial path and empower them, and corollary basic public policies, e.g., government support of more business training and initiatives for women. To date, research into female entrepreneurship has failed to thoroughly explore these questions.

Obviously, encouragement, positive attitudes and higher confidence in women’s abilities to succeed in entrepreneurship will lead women to embark on the new venture creation process. However, there is no one key to women’s fundamental characteristics, and women in different countries are driven by different national and cultural codes. It is only by becoming familiar with different local contexts that the avenues to reaching the essence of such keys can be explored. This exploration will delineate the broader common ground of entrepreneurial activity among women entrepreneurs in different countries, while sketching the uniqueness of female entrepreneurship in each.

For example, while in the broad context women are more reluctant than men to start entrepreneurial ventures, in the local context, American women consider education and training to be driving forces for embarking on entrepreneurship, western European women appreciate other women entrepreneurs as role models, while women in the Middle East may find their family’s consent to be the driver in starting a new venture. Thus, variations exist across women entrepreneurs in various countries, and such distinctness has significant implications at both the macro and micro levels (Buttner & Rosen, 1989; Fagenson, 1993; Kalleberg & Leicht, 1991; Minniti, Arenius, & Langowitz, 2005b; Sexton & Bowman-Upton, 1990).

Figure 1.1 An International Look at Female Entrepreneurship and Attitudes.

Figure 1.1 shows the relations and dynamic effects of the local context on prevalence of female entrepreneurship, and its consequent dual-faceted effects on different aspects of the labor market and life.

The roles of country, culture, policies, and services are all salient in both crafting and reflecting upon the attitudes toward female entrepreneurship, following women’s distinctiveness in the new venture creation process (Hofstede, Hofstede, & Minkov, 2010; Minkov & Hofstede, 2011; Singh, Reynolds, & Muhammad, 2001).

Female Entrepreneurship around the Globe

Higher levels of entrepreneurial activity are associated with increasing involvement of women. Research and empirical reports (e.g., Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), OECD¹) yield a clear picture of female entrepreneurship as a distinctive phenomenon in different countries. Table 1.1 summarizes the empirical evidence from different sources in three categories, to emphasize the genders’ similarities and differences in the global entrepreneurial realm in recent years.

Table 1.1 Female Entrepreneurship around the Globe

Main themes	Main findings
Entrepreneurial activity	The level and type of entrepreneurial activity vary across countries Countries with similar levels of per capita GDP tend to exhibit broadly similar gender gaps Women entrepreneurs, similar to men, create and run businesses across all of the broad industrial sectors, but there are a significantly higher percentage of women’s ventures in the consumer-oriented sector The gender gap in business survival rates varies; in high-income countries there is no gender difference
Motivation: necessity opportunity	Across all countries, the rate of male opportunity entrepreneurship is higher than that of women There is no gender gap with respect to necessity entrepreneurship, irrespective of country group Women (and men) in households with the highest incomes are more likely to be involved in entrepreneurial activity
Main characteristics	Female and male entrepreneurs have similar growth potentials in all countries (sector, innovation)
	Age distribution is similar for men and Women entrepreneurs The likelihood of being involved in entrepreneurial activity is significantly higher for employed vs. unemployed women

In seeking explanations for these differences, the existing research has exami...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Personal Outlook
• Contributors
• Introduction The Area of Female Entrepreneurship in the Initial Phases of the New Venture Creation
• Part 1 Female Entrepreneurship What Makes this Area Unique?
• Part 2 The Venture Creation Process
• Part 3 Women's Ride across the River1 From Creativity, Innovation and Vision to Implementation
• Part 4 The First Steps in Venture Creation
• Part 5 The Future of Female Entrepreneurship
• References
• Index