Organizing Entrepreneurship? Women’s Invisibility in Self-employment

  • Deborah Kerfoot
  • Caroline Miller
Chapter

Abstract

Entrepreneurship in the UK, advanced not least by the British government and other agencies, encourages enterprise and innovation. For example, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) claims to:

Promote enterprise, innovation and increased productivity — in particular by encouraging successful business start-ups, and by increasing the capacity of business including SME’s to grow, to invest, to develop skills, to adopt best practice... [it is] UK policy to promote enterprise ... and is seen to be of key importance in terms of employment, and wealth creation, and poverty alleviation. (DTI Website, www.dti.gov.uk).

Keywords

Small Business Woman Entrepreneur Female Entrepreneur Small Business Owner Masculine Norm 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Acker, J. (1990) ‘Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: A theory of gendered organizations’, Gender & Society, 4: 139–158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  2. Ahl, H. J. (2002) ‘The construction of the female entrepreneur as the Other’, in Czarniawska, B. and Höpfl, H. (eds) Casting the Other, pp. 52–67. London: Sage.Google Scholar
  3. Allen, S. and Trueman C. (eds) (1993) Women in Business: Perspectives on Women Entrepreneurs. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
  4. Alvesson, M. and Skoldberg, K. (2000) Reflexive Methodology. London: Sage.Google Scholar
  5. Ardener, S. (ed.) (1993) Women and Space Ground Rules and Social Maps. Oxford: Berg Publishers Ltd.Google Scholar
  6. Atkinson, P. and Hammersley, M. (1994) ‘Ethnography and participant observation’. In Denzin, N. and Lincoln, Y. (eds) Handbook of Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
  7. Baszanger, I. and Dodier, N. (1997) ‘Ethnography: Relating the part to the whole’. In Silverman, D. (ed.) Qualitative Research: Theory, Method and Practice. London: Sage.Google Scholar
  8. Birley, S. (1989) ‘Female Entrepreneurs: Are they really any different?’, Journal of Small Business Management, 27(1): 32–38.Google Scholar
  9. Bruni, A., Gherardi, S. and Poggio, B. (2004a) ‘Doing gender, doing entrepreneurship: An ethnographic account of intertwined practices’, Gender, Work and Organisation, 11(4): 406–429.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  10. Bruni, A., Gherardi, S. and Poggio, B. (2004b) ‘Entrepreneur mentality, gender and the study of women entrepreneurs’, Journal of Organizational Change Management, 17(3): 256–268.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  11. Burns, P. and Harrison, J. (1996) Small Business and Entrepreneurship, 2nd edition. Edited by Paul Burns and Jim Dewhurst. Hampshire: Macmillan Press.Google Scholar
  12. Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
  13. Carrigan, T., Connell, B. and Lee, J. (1997) ‘Toward a new sociology of masculinity’. In Brod, H. (ed.) The Making of Masculinities: The New Men’s Studies. Boston: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
  14. Carter, S. (2000) ‘Improving the numbers and performance of women owned businesses: Some implications for training and advisory services’, Education and Training, 42(4/5): 326–333.Google Scholar
  15. Carter, S. and Rosa, P. (1998) ‘The financing of male and female owned businesses’, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 10: 225–241.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  16. Cockburn, C. (1991) In The Way of Women. Basingstoke: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  17. Collinson, D. L. (2002) ‘Managing Humour’, Journal of Management Studies, 39: 269–288.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  18. DTI (Department of Trade and Industry) (2005) A strategic framework for women’s enterprise.Google Scholar
  19. Eckenrode, J. and Gore, S. (1990) Stress Between Work and Family. New York: Plenum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  20. Ehlers, T. B. and Main, K. (1998) ‘Women and the false promise of microenterprise’, Gender and Society, 12(4): 424–440.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  21. Fay, B. (2002) Contemporary Philosophy of Social Science. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
  22. Fenwick, T. (2002) ‘Transgressive desires: new enterprising selves in the new capitalism’, Work, Employment & Society, 16(4): 703–723.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  23. Foucault, M. (1984) ‘On the genealogy of ethics’. In Rabinow, P. (ed.) The Foucault Reader. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
  24. Foucault, M. (1997) ‘Friendship as a way of life’, in Rabinow, P. (ed.) Michel Foucault — The Essential Works Volume One: Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
  25. FSB (2004) Lifting Barriers to Growth in UK Small Businesses at www.fsb.org.uk/policy/overview/aspGoogle Scholar
  26. Gherardi, S. (1995) Gender, Symbolism and Organisational Culture. London: Sage.Google Scholar
  27. Goffee and Scase (1985) Women in Charge: The Experience of Female Entrepreneurs. London: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
  28. Goffee and Scase (1987) Entrepreneurship in Europe: The Social Processes. Kent: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
  29. Green, E. and Cohen, L. (1995) ‘Women’s business: Are women entrepreneurs breaking new ground or simply balancing the demands of “women’s work” in a new way?’, Journal of Gender Studies, 4(3): 297–314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  30. Highfield, T. (2006) ‘Women are the victims of discrimination in science. I know — I used to be one’, The Daily Telegraph, July 13th, p. 10.Google Scholar
  31. Hochschild, A. (1997) The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work. New York: Metropolitan Books.Google Scholar
  32. Holliday, A. (2002) Doing and Writing Qualitative Research. London: Sage.Google Scholar
  33. Lee-Gosselin, H. and Grise, J. (1990) ‘Are women owner-managers challenging our definitions of entrepreneurship? An in depth survey’, Journal of Business Ethics, 9(4): 423–433.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  34. Lewis, P. (2006) ‘The quest for invisibility: Female entrepreneurs and the masculine norm of entrepreneurship’, Gender, Work and Organization, 13(5): 453–469.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  35. Liff, S. and Ward, K. (2001) ‘Distorted views through the glass ceiling: The construction of women’s understanding of promotion and senior management Positions’, Gender, Work and Organization, 8(1): 19–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  36. Marlow, S. (2002) ‘Self employed women: Apart of or apart from feminist theory?’, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, 2(2): 83–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  37. Mirchandani, K. (1999) ‘Feminist insight on gendered work: New directions in research on women and entrepreneurship’, Gender, Work and Organization, 6(4): 224–235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  38. Morgan, G. and Knights, D. (1991) ‘Gendering jobs: Corporate strategy, managerial control and the dynamics of job segregation’, Work, Employment & Society, 5(2): 181–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  39. Mulholland, K. (1996) Entrepreneurialism, masculinities and the Self made man’. In Collinson, D. and Hearn, J. (eds) Men as Managers, Managers as Men: Critical Perspectives on Men, Masculinities and Managements. London: Sage.Google Scholar
  40. OECD Report (1998) Women Entrepreneurs in Small and Medium Enterprises, pp. 155–167.Google Scholar
  41. Phillipson, I. (1995) How To Be An Entrepreneur. A Guide For The Under 25’s. London: Kogan Page.Google Scholar
  42. Prasad, P. (1997) ‘Systems of meaning: Ethnography as a methodology for the study of information technologies’. In Lee, A. (ed.) Information Systems and Qualitative Research. London: Chapman Hall.Google Scholar
  43. Ransom, J. (1993) ‘Feminism, difference and discourse: The limits of discursive analysis for feminism’. In Ramazanoglu, C. (ed.) Up Against Foucault. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
  44. Saco, D. (1992) ‘Masculinity as signs: Post-structuralist feminist approaches to the study of gender’. In Craig, S. (ed.) Men, Masculinity and the Media. London: Sage.Google Scholar
  45. Schwartz, E. B. (1976) ‘Entrepreneurship: A new female frontier’, Journal of Contemporary Business, Winter, 47–76.Google Scholar
  46. Silverman, D. (1997) ‘The logic of qualitative research’, in Miller, G. and Dingwall, R. (eds) Context and Method in Qualitative Research. London: Sage.Google Scholar
  47. Silverman, D. (2001) Interpreting Qualitative Data. London: Sage, Dehli: Thousand Oaks.Google Scholar
  48. UK Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (2001) Executive Report at www.consortium.orgGoogle Scholar
  49. Watkins, D. S. and Watkins, J. (1984) ‘The female entrepreneur: Her background and determinants of business choice, some British data’, International Small Business Journal, 2(4): 55–70.Google Scholar
  50. Willis, P. (2000) The Ethnographic Imagination. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
  53. www.iwight.com/isle_womens/funding_support

Copyright information

© Deborah Kerfoot and Caroline Miller 2010

Authors and Affiliations

  • Deborah Kerfoot
    • 1
  • Caroline Miller
    • 2
  1. 1.Keele UniversityUK
  2. 2.Manchester Metropolitan UniversityUK

Personalised recommendations