Women and Self-Employment

There has been a notable increase in the number of women entering self-employment in the UK since the 1980s, such that by 1997 women represented approximately 26% of the self-employed population (Office of National Statistics, 1997). Existing evidence pertaining to this area has largely focused upon the challenges presented specifically to women when entering self-employment and whether their problems are associated with their gender. Whilst there are dissenting opinions, the evidence would appear to suggest that women will experience challenges within self-employment that can be related to their gender. This has resulted in suggestions for specific policies or initiatives to assist women to overcome these barriers, and also suggestions regarding specific behaviours that women might adopt to help themselves and to serve as role models to other nascent female ‘entrepreneurs’. This paper offers a critique of the dominant focus of the literature pertaining to women and self-employment and upon the so-called ‘solution’ to the problem of female entrepreneurship. Rather, it is suggested that the prevailing literature has almost completely failed to cite the analysis of women in self-employment in the larger feminist debate regarding female subordination, androcentric norms and masculinized hegemony. Hence, the dominant analysis in this area represents women as blemished men who must be assisted to become honorary men, and in so doing will then achieve within the existing paradigm of entrepreneurship. For as long as this analysis persists, our comprehension of the experience of femaleness and self-employment will only be partial.