The Growing Importance of Women. Female Entrepreneurship

This paper focuses on female entrepreneurship. Two groups of female entrepreneurs are compared: those who started a business out of opportunity and who started out of necessity. Observations from two countries participating in the GEM (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor) 2007 survey are used. Logistic regressions have been performed to investigate the effects of different variables on female necessity and opportunity entrepreneurship. Results show that there are differences between female opportunity and female necessity entrepreneurs. For example, the effect of knowing an entrepreneur is found to be significant for female opportunity entrepreneurs but not for female necessity entrepreneurs. This variable could stimulate or discourage opportunity and necessity entrepreneurs to start a business. Therefore the effects of all the variables are interesting for making policies. The results of men are also included in this paper to give a more complete overview of entrepreneurship in general. The results for men are different when they are compared to the results of women. Good examples of this are the differences between male and female necessity entrepreneurs.