Abstract
The role played by entrepreneurship in a country’s economy is crucial, since its potential catalyzes job creation, economic growth and social impact. Case studies developed on the behaviour pattern and characteristics of the European entrepreneurship, distinguishing between male and female entrepreneurs, show that, today, gender gaps remain persistent. Progress, though, has been achieved in key areas related to gender equality between men and women. Given this context, the primary purpose of this chapter is to implement an approach to the profile of current European entrepreneurs, analyzing the main defining features, through their contribution to the European economy. Specifically, part of the chapter focuses on the study of the potential distinguishing traits of both male and female entrepreneurs in the European Union, with regard to aspects such as employment, education, activity sectors or access to finance, in comparison with other reference countries.
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Notes
- 1.
The main goal of this strategy is to turn the EU into a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy (European Commission 2010).
- 2.
Flagship initiative “An industrial policy for the globalization era” to improve the business environment, especially for SMEs. The goal of improving entrepreneurship within the EU is also provided in other sections of this strategy.
- 3.
Published on 21 January 2003.
- 4.
This is the first sentence of the Green Paper on Entrepreneurship in Europe (European Commission 2003).
- 5.
This corresponds to the Eurobarometer survey data collected in December 2009 and published in the report entitled “Entrepreneurship in the EU and beyond: Analytical Report” (Gallup Organization 2010).
- 6.
According to the last Eurobarometer survey (Gallup Organization 2010).
- 7.
It should be kept in mind that, at present, there are over 20 million enterprises (SMEs) in the EU, roughly representing 99.8% of the total, which is more than two thirds of all employment (EIM 2010).
- 8.
In this regard, see conclusions and recommendations provided in the Best Report published in 2004 (European Commission 2004b).
- 9.
The “women entrepreneurship portal” (http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/sme/promoting-entrepreneurship/women/portal) aims at providing links to the Web sites of women entrepreneurs’ representative organizations, networks, projects and events that relate to the promotion of female entrepreneurship.
- 10.
Although it has been almost three centuries since, in 1755, Richard Cantillon made a significant contribution to the definition of “entrepreneur”, it is true that there is still no unanimity about its meaning. In this regard, it is worth checking the OECD Statistics Working Paper published in 2008 under the heading “Defining Entrepreneurial Activity: Definitions Supporting Frameworks for Data Collection”, where entrepreneurs are defined as “those persons (business owners) who seek to generate value, through the creation or expansion of economic activity, by identifying and exploiting new products, processes or markets” (Ahmad and Seymour 2008). The European Commission even provides in one of its reports a specific definition for female entrepreneurs: “woman who has created a business in which she has a majority shareholding and who takes an active interest in the decision-making, risk-taking and day-today management” (European Commission 2004b).
- 11.
For example, the European Commission defines entrepreneurship as “the mindset and process to create and develop economic activity by blending risk-taking, creativity and/or innovation with sound management, within a new or an existing organization” (European Commission 2003). The OECD puts forward the following definition: “Entrepreneurship is the phenomena associated with entrepreneurial activity, which is the enterprising human action in pursuit of the generation of value, through the creation or expansion of economic activity, by identifying and exploiting new products, processes or markets” (Ahmad and Seymour 2008).
- 12.
This chapter, mainly due to the constraints and characteristics of available databases, presents a comprehensive profile of the European entrepreneur, distinguishing between men and women. In other words, despite gaps in terms of gender (differences between males and females) and sex (men and women), gender-disaggregated data “by gender” or “by sex” are jointly analyzed. On this point, it is advisable to refer to the first chapter of the manual Developing Gender Statistics: A Practical Tool prepared by the United Nations Economic Commission for European 2010 (United Nations 2010).
- 13.
The European countries included in this study are as follows: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Kazakhstan, Latvia, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the UK.
- 14.
This conclusion is in line with the results of the latest global report, also published by the GEM, which states that the probability of men being involved in an early stage entrepreneurial activity is twice higher than for women (Bosma and Levie 2010).
- 15.
The classification of the levels of education used is that designed according to the provisions of UNESCO (2006). Thus, primary education includes pre-primary, primary and lower secondary education (levels 0–2 of ISCED 1997); secondary education includes upper-secondary and post-secondary non-tertiary education (levels 3–4 of ISCED 1997); and finally, tertiary education includes tertiary programmes (levels 5–6 of ISCED 1997).
- 16.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) describes the purpose of the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO) as a tool for organizing jobs into a clearly defined set of groups according to the tasks and duties undertaken in the job.
- 17.
These results could justify some of the targets set forth in Europe 2020 strategy, which responds to the challenge of boosting economic growth, based on a coordination of economic policies facilitating the entry of young European entrepreneurs to the labour market. For more details, see European Commission (2010).
- 18.
Results shown in the latest report on women entrepreneurs, published by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, include more detailed findings on specific cases: Finland, Latvia and Turkey (Allen et al. 2008).
- 19.
However, if the information related to the indicator measuring “gender pay gap” within the Structural Indicators published by Eurostat is compared with the data from the same source collected on the number of self-employed people and employers, it is shown that there is no empirical evidence to verify this assertion for the EU Member States.
- 20.
- 21.
In this regard, see the work by Robb and Wolken (2002), as well as the references therein.
- 22.
These needs were defined, with explicit recommendations, in the Entrepreneurship Action Plan presented by European Commission (2004a).
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Acknowledgments
The author appreciates the support received from UNED’s Research Vice-Rectorship through “UNED’s Research Promotion Plan”.
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Rodríguez, F.R., González-Sánchez, V.M., de los Ríos Sastre, S. (2012). The Profile of the European Entrepreneur: Economics and Finance, a Gender Analysis. In: Galindo, MA., Ribeiro, D. (eds) Women’s Entrepreneurship and Economics. International Studies in Entrepreneurship, vol 1000. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1293-9_10
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