Gender view on self-employment in Germany

Inspite of an excessive growth in woman self-employment in Germany, most research findings indicate a striking gender gap in a quantitative as well as in a qualitative sense. Until a few years ago, there had been a substantial lack of up-to-date representative statistical information on the development and structures of men and woman self-employment. An earlier version of this paper presented in 2002 for the first time sets up an analysis using cross-sectional Micro Census Data for Germany. This paper is an updated version, comparing socio-economic characteristics, occupational patterns and the sectoral distribution of self-employed women and men in 2004 and 1995. The results show slight structural changes towards higher education levels of self-employed women. With respect to occupational attainment, a trend of growing women self-employment in non-typical woman's professions, predominantly managers, consultants and auditors is visible and traditional occupations in women self-employment are becoming less important. It seems that women self-employment is earning profit out of the overall growth in certain service sectors such as health and social services, education and also to a certain extent in business-related services. Albeit recent trends, a gender bias in self-employment largely persists with respect to the share of women-owned businesses, the size of establishment, income and the extent of part-time work.