Women's Entrepreneurship and Economics

Citation

Méndez Picazo, M.T. (2012), "Women's Entrepreneurship and Economics", Management Decision, Vol. 50 No. 10, pp. 1921-1928. https://doi.org/10.1108/00251741211279693

The current economic crisis faced by many countries has necessitated new policies to mitigate the negative effects of this situation. In general terms, many economists and policy makers consider that reducing public deficits and improving economic growth are two key factors to drive economies from a depression to an expansion phase.

However, it also may be that both factors, public deficits and economic growth, could be addressed by looking at only one factor: economic growth. Enhancing this factor may make it possible to obtain the necessary resources to reduce the deficits, thereby increasing the social welfare of the country. Therefore, it is interesting to determine those factors that enhance economic growth to better design a strategy that would maintain the process and allow the social benefits to be enjoyed by economic agents as long as possible.

In this vein, there is a huge body of literature, theoretical and empirical, that analyzes the different factors conducive to economic growth. From this point‐of‐view, not only quantitative (physical capital, human capital, public capital) but also qualitative (trust, governance) variables have been considered. Depending on the kind of model considered, different variables have been included in the analysis. However, recent studies have focused on the role of entrepreneurship activity (Acs et al., 2005; Audretsch and Keilbach, 2004, 2008; Holcombe, 2007 and Galindo et al., 2010, among others).

The main reason to consider such activity as key to enhancing economic growth is that entrepreneurs usually use available resources in an efficient way to produce goods and services. Thus, more jobs are created, reducing the unemployment rate; more basic needs are met; and governments obtain more resources from taxes, which can be used to reduce their deficits or to finance more or new social expenditure. For these reasons, there is an important literature that has focused on analyzing the characteristics of entrepreneurship activity from different point‐of‐views, macro, micro, and organization.

When entrepreneurship activity is analyzed, it is important not to overlook the role played by women. As occurred in many aspects of socioeconomic activity, women have become more involved in entrepreneurship, which is also an important element in the economic growth process. However, according to the data supplied by Global Entrepreneurship activity (GEM) in their index measuring this activity, the Total Entrepreneurship Activity (TEA), the percentage of women involved is lower than the men. Additionally, women entrepreneurs present different aspects in their activity from those faced by male entrepreneurs, which must be considered in designing adequate and effective measures to improve this activity (Mathew, 2010).

The book edited by Miguel‐Ángel Galindo and Domingo Ribeiro, Women's Entrepreneurship and Economics: New Perspectives, Practices and Politics, analyzes many of these questions. In the different chapters of the book, their authors present the female perspective in research, practice and policymaking, showing the insights and implications.

To achieve this objective, the book is divided into four parts. The first one is focused on women's economic thought in general (Pujol, 1992). In the chapter included in this part entitled, “Women's approach to economics and firms,” by Miguel‐Ángel Galindo, Domingo Ribeiro and Juan José Rubio, the main elements of the female theories on economics are considered, especially during the Classical and Neoclassical periods. In general terms, women economists were mainly interested in the aspects related to wage differences between women and men, position of women in family, their education and, not least important, in popularizing the economic ideas considered orthodox.

Part II is focused on policies and performances (Fuentes et al., 2010) that would have positive effects on women's entrepreneurial activities. Several elements are considered in the six chapters included in this section.

The relationship between women entrepreneurship and economic growth is analyzed in the chapter entitled, “Women's entrepreneurship and economic policies,” by Miguel A. Galindo, Mohsen Bahmani‐Oskooee and María Teresa Méndez Picazo. Using data for the case of some OECD countries, some policy recommendations are proposed to enhance their activity.

Women's research activity is analyzed by Sahar Bahmani, Francisco Escribano, and Isabel Pardo in the third chapter, entitled, “Women, research and entrepreneurship.” The situation of women as entrepreneurs and researchers is considered, stating that they are yet under‐represented in many areas of public life despite the fact that they have increased their participation in every sphere of social activity (Fischer et al., 1993).

Social entrepreneurship activity is studied in the chapter entitled, “Linking women entrepreneurship with social entrepreneurship” by María Mar Benavides‐Espinosa and Antonia Mohedano‐Suanes. The greater sensitivity of women towards social aspects has increased their presence in the different areas of social entrepreneurship. In this chapter, different Spanish experiences of social entrepreneurship among women are considered, showing the main motives for female entrepreneurship and the different characteristics of their activity.

The topic of success and failure (Franco and Haase, 2010; Hormiga et al., 2011) in the case of women entrepreneurship activity is looked at by Kerstin Ettl and Friederike Welter in their chapter entitled, “Women entrepreneurs and success”. Taking into account that traditional research does not bring the definition of success into question, a model of women entrepreneurs' success is considered for the case of four German regions between August 2007 and March 2008. The results show the complexity of success with many business and personal life aspects in their entrepreneurial activities.

The relationship between performance and gender is studied in the chapter entitled, “Women entrepreneurship and performance,” by Joaquín Aldas Manzano, Clara Martínez‐Fuentes, and Manuela Pardo‐del‐Val, who analyze the relationship between performance and gender (Menzies et al., 2004, and Johnsen and McMahon, 2005, among others). Some literature states that there is no link between the two variables and there is no final conclusion as to whether women entrepreneurships are less or more successful than male. GEM data are used to analyze this question, concluding that horizontal segregation, lower self‐confidence, and less economic capital are characteristic of female entrepreneurship and could be an explanation for underperformance.

A similar topic is raised by Roberto Espíritu‐Olmos and Miguel Angel Sastre‐Castillo in their chapter entitled, “Why women claim to be less entrepreneurial than men”. Using a sample of selected students of different universities of Madrid, different situations that could influence to women to carry out the entrepreneur activity are considered (Cowling and Taylor, 2001).

Finance (Krasniqi, 2010), part three, is other important topic to be considered in this analysis and three main elements are considered. First, internalization (Smolarski and Kut, 2011), is analyzed by Edward Nissan, Inmaculada Carrasco and María Soledad Castaño in the chapter entitled, “Women entrepreneurship, finance and internationalization.” Using the GEM data, the role of gender in entrepreneurship, international trade and innovation is analyzed.

Second, the study of the situation of entrepreneurship activity (Ramírez et al., 2010; Sommer and Haug, 2011) for the case of the European Union is carried out by Francisco R. Rodríguez, Víctor M. González Sánchez, and Susana de los Ríos Sastre in the chapter entitled, “The profile of the european entrepreneur: economics and finance, a gender analysis”. The differences and similarities of female and male entrepreneurs are shown, stating that it is not clear that women start their businesses with fewer financial resources than male, that they have special difficulties to access to external financial resources and women are usually regarded as the main receivers of microcredits.

The last chapter of this part is focused on microcredits. In the paper entitled, “Microcredits for women's entrepreneurship: are they an effective tool to avoid family impoverishment?”, Jorge Alberto Gámez Gutierrez and José Manuel Sáiz‐Álvarez analyze, from a theoretical point‐of‐view, their main relevant positive aspects and problems. The positive ones create a virtuous circle that benefits society as a whole. On the other hand, to avoid the negative aspects, it is necessary to improve basic education and state intervention, create national and international supervision and increase information transparency (Chowdhury, 2008).

Finally, part four considers other relevant aspects related to women entrepreneurship. The first is women's biological characteristics. In the chapter entitled, “Woman entrepreneurship and gender accountability”, Marta Peris‐Ortiz, Daniel Palacios‐Marqués and Carlos Rueda‐Armengot show the relevant aspects of work‐family life reconciliation (Bruni et al., 2004). Second is related to culture (Bergh et al., 2011, Lee et al., 2011) and university education. Rosa González‐Tirados in the chapter entitled “Women in university education and in the professional environment”, focuses on women's activities in university education, showing the differences between females and males and concluding that both must achieve a context of equality regarding retribution, position, duties and skills.

Finally, collective entrepreneurship is analyzed by Marie Claire Malo, Inmaculada Buedía‐Martínez and Marine Vèzina, in the chapter entitled, “A conceptualization of women's collective entrepreneurship”. They provide an overview of the existing literature, from strategic perspectives to public policies (Ojala and Heikkilä, 2011).

All in all, the book edited by Miguel‐Ángel Galindo and Domingo Ribeiro offers a rigorous and complete analysis of the situation, looking at problems and at ways to enhance women's entrepreneurship activity.

About the author

María Teresa Méndez Picazo is PhD, Assistant Professor of Financial Economy and Accounting at the University Complutense of Madrid (Spain). Her research areas are Entrepreneurship, International Accounting and Economic Growth. She has published several articles on these topics in international specialised journals and books. María Teresa Méndez Picazo can be contacted at: mtmendezpi@gmail.com