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The family - a barrier or motivation for female entrepreneurship?

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Abstract

The underrepresentation of women in entrepreneurship is consistent over cultures and countries, and is even higher in Norway than in most other industrialised societies. In spite of a growing literature, the reasons for this pattern are still not well understood. In this paper I explore an area that has been little researched so far, the family and household situation. I study the presence of children and their ages, the role of the partner's characteristics and the household's financial resources. The results show that women are more likely to choose self-employment over wage-work when the children are small, indicating that children are no barrier to entrepreneurship, at least not when defined as self-employment as in this paper. The self-employment propensity of both women and men are negatively related to their partner's working hours and positively related to him (or her) being self-employed himself (herself). The causal direction of these relationships cannot be established in the present analysis and needs to be investigated closer in future research.

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  • Marit Rønsen, 2012. "The family - a barrier or motivation for female entrepreneurship?," Discussion Papers 727, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    • Handle: RePEc:ssb:dispap:727
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    1. Entrepreneurship-paper of the day
      by UDADISI in UDADISI on 2013-01-12 03:30:00

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    1. Natalia VINOGRADOVA & Elena ACULAI & Vladislav BOLDURAT, 2022. "Women's entrepreneurship in the Republic of Moldova: special needs and policy priorities," Eastern Journal of European Studies, Centre for European Studies, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, vol. 13, pages 77-98, December.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Entrepreneurship; self-employment; gender; work and family; partner's characteristics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L26 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Entrepreneurship
    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply

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