Entrepreneurship and Gender

Entrepreneurship and Gender

Entrepreneurship plays an important role in generating jobs, invention and growth. Fostering entrepreneurship is a vital policy goal for governments who expect that high rates of entrepreneurial activity will make sustainable jobs. Self-employment, also contributes to job creation in Europe, as 30% of the self-employed have employees of their own.

European-level data show that the self-employment sector has shown a degree of resilience during the recent financial crisis, as the comparative decline in rate of self-employment has been more moderate in comparison with remunerated employment.

It is argued that gendered socio‐economic arrangement ensures that businesses owned by women demonstrate constrained performance but this is not the same with under‐performance. Moreover, deep-seated epistemological gendered biases still continue which portray women as flawed entrepreneurs in spite of the absence of convincing data regarding essential gendered differences between the performance of male and female entrepreneurs.