Self-Employed Women in Europe: Lack of Opportunity or Forced by Necessity?

Mónica Ferrín

Work, Employment & Society, 2023, vol. 37, issue 3, 625-644

Abstract: The gender gap in self-employment is one of the most resilient in labour participation. While for some, this gap is the result of women’s lack of opportunities to become self-employed, for others, it reflects women’s preference to stay in paid employment. This article investigates the motivations behind women’s decision (either from opportunity or necessity) to start a business in 17 European countries. Results from the analysis suggest that individual resources are fundamental in explaining women’s motivations to become entrepreneurs. The type of gender regime and the economic situation in their country also play a role in women’s decisions to start a business. Women are more likely to be driven due to opportunity in dual-earner gender regimes than elsewhere, and high levels of unemployment produced by the economic crisis have boosted women’s self-employment from necessity. These findings are discussed in relation to the gender gap in self-employment.

Keywords: entrepreneurial motivations; Europe; gender; opportunity and necessity; push-pull factors; self-employment motivations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09500170211035316 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:woemps:v:37:y:2023:i:3:p:625-644

DOI: 10.1177/09500170211035316

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Work, Employment & Society from British Sociological Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().