Informal entrepreneurs and their motives: a gender perspective

Purpose It is now widely recognised that in most economies there is a large number of hidden entrepreneurs operating wholly or partially “off‐the‐books”. Until now, however, there has been a degree of silence on the gendering of such entrepreneurship, including exploring whether men and women have different motives for participating in hidden/informal entrepreneurship. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to begin to fill this gap in the knowledge. Design/methodology/approach The findings of face‐to‐face structured interviews with 130 informal entrepreneurs in England are reported; 70 are early‐stage entrepreneurs and 60 are established business owner‐managers, living in a range of affluent and deprived urban and rural English localities. Findings A key finding of the paper is that three‐quarters of entrepreneurs operate in the informal economy, with women informal entrepreneurs chiefly necessity‐driven and men being largely voluntary participants in informal entrepreneurship. Further unpacking their motives, however, reveals not only that both necessity and choice are co‐present motives for most informal entrepreneurs, but also that their motives change over time, with many women who originally entered informal entrepreneurship out of necessity becoming more opportunity‐driven. Research limitations/implications Although this survey is conducted in a diverse range of English localities to avoid the pitfall of generalizing from a specific locality‐type, it does not provide nationally representative data on informal entrepreneurship. Originality/value This is one of the first studies attempting to investigate why men and women engage in informal entrepreneurship.