Women and Entrepreneurship

It has been found that there are only about half as many self-employed women as men. Dr Francis Greene, Warwick Business School (WBS), and Dr Liang Han, Hull University, have been investigating this discrepancy. They are exploring the possibility that women are more likely to be self-employed if their mothers were also entrepreneurs.

There have been various policy initiatives in recent years to try and address the underrepresentation of women in self-employment. Given the gender pay gap some might expect women to be jumping at entrepreneurship opportunities where they can set their own pay and be their own boss. Unfortunately, at the last count, there are only about half as many women as there are men in business. There is a question, however, surrounding how successful such initiatives can be, given that they cannot really address external factors making it more difficult for women in any workplace, self-employed or not. In addition, they cannot tackle other deep-rooted internal factors - women might not perceive themselves as having the necessary aptitudes for business success.

The common reasons cited for the overall difference are:
•    Women may not think they have the requisite attributes to make it - ‘communal’ stereotypes of women imply that they are better suited, and more likely to succeed, in nurturing roles; therefore occupational segregation persists.
•    Women face discrimination and they often have shallower business networks, making it more difficult to access the right people to make their business work.
•    Women often have family commitments that serve as a barrier.

Dr Francis Greene, of WBS, along with Dr Liang Han, of Hull University Business School, are collaborating on a paper entitled [working title]: ‘What influences do gender roles and stereotypes have on women’s entrepreneurial outcomes?’

They are investigating a possible intergenerational effect between mothers and daughters; initial findings show that women are more likely to become entrepreneurs if their mothers were self-employed (but no more likely if their fathers were self-employed). Dr Greene is using social role theory to provide a possible mechanism for this process; social role theory suggests that our stereotypes are formed and continually reinforced by the gender roles we observe being performed in everyday life.

Dr Greene suggests that there is a lot of research that can follow up this initial investigation, especially given the surprising result that the mother’s occupation has a greater effect on the daughter than the father’s. The paper makes use of the British Cohort Study of 1970, a vast database that has tracked the development of 17,000 people born in 1970. For this paper, select data collected at several intervals during the lives of 2-3000 females has been used.

Listen now to Dr Greene talking about this work.