Female entrepreneurs in Serbia at the beginning of the 2000s

Abstract

This paper discusses the topics related to the personal and social characteristics of a group of female entrepreneurs from several towns in Serbia, their motives and main reasons for entering the entrepreneur activities in the unstable social conditions, prerequisites to start one's own business, opinions about personal characteristics significant for the success in business activities, problems and social circumstances which impede the individual entrepreneur activity of women, satisfaction with their business activities, ways to harmonize family and business obligations. 183 As a whole, the results of this qualitative study indicate that the female entrepreneurs in Serbia are well educated, that they belong to different professional groups, that they have significant previous work experience that their social background stretches along the entire scale of social stratification, that they are rather equally divided into married and divorced, as a rule with children. They developed their own businesses within the range of typical female fields - retail trade and usual services, with the tendency to enter the area of intellectual services. It was established that there are specific problems and limitations for the entrepreneur activities of women in the unstable work conditions and in still rather patriarchally organized environment in our country. These problems also imply the lack of suitable credits and stimulative programmes for this type of business activities of women, skepticism of the environment toward women in business, double work of women (job, as well as family and children), lack of self-confidence. Envisaged personal characteristics necessary for the success in business include: work and diligence, professional knowledge and readiness for permanent education, persistence and perseverance responsibility and punctuality, communication skills, which are all characteristics quite realistically depicting the demands for the participants in business activities in market economy. As advantages of women over men in running a business, the interviewed female entrepreneurs pointed out: responsibility, persistence, consistency, realism, seriousness diligence and efficiency. It was established that there was a significant satisfaction with their own business activities through which their initial tendencies and motives were mainly realized. Family obligations make a circle which still stifles female entrepreneurs in business activities, which is one of the differentiating characteristics ("differences") in private business in comparison with men.