Women in self-employment and entrepreneurial roles

Abstract

The discipline of entrepreneurship has attracted significant attention over the past 30 years in the academic environment (Yadav and Unni, 2016). The initial research exploring the concept of entrepreneurship focused mainly on male entrepreneurs, with the prevailing assumption that gender may not impact entrepreneurial activities. The role of gender in entrepreneurship has been recognized as important as early as 1970s, leading to the emergence of women's entrepreneurship as a sub-domain in entrepreneurship research (Bourne and Calas, 2013). However, academic research remained limited until the late 1990s, and women's entrepreneurship developed as a significant area of research only towards early 2000 (Jennings and Brush, 2013). Currently, many areas of women's entrepreneurship remain underexplored (Lewis, 2014), even though there are an estimated 128 million women starting new businesses and an estimated 98 million women running established businesses (GEM, 2015). The link between entrepreneurship and economic growth has only been well established at the turn of the century (Langowitz and Minniti, 2007). Development of entrepreneurship, and women's entrepreneurship in particular, is important for continued economic growth and sustainable development. However, the pursuits of entrepreneurial activities need to carefully consider market opportunities, situational contexts and the role played by institutions (Grief, 2000).