Abstract
To date, entrepreneurship research has rarely focused on cooperatives. Recent research has suggested there is a positive association between cooperatives and women’s entrepreneurial activity based on the assumption that this model is especially suitable for women’s expectations and is favourable to their economic entrepreneurial development. However, few studies have empirically tested these propositions. This research, which analysed data from 264 Spanish cooperatives, confirms these findings. A mixed-methods approach was used. In the first stage, a Delphi study was run with 11 cooperative entrepreneurship experts to ask what factors may be decisive for women preferring a cooperative model. In the second stage, the factors derived from the Delphi study were used in a survey targeting female cooperative associates. The findings confirmed that female cooperative owners perceived this business model to be aligned with their values and best fit their work and lifestyle. This research contributes to the existing social entrepreneurship literature by providing empirical evidence from the Spanish context that highlights the role of women in cooperatives. The findings also emphasize the need for responsive policies and programmes that promote the cooperative model since it promotes female employment and women’s entrepreneurial activity even in periods of economic austerity.
Highlights
The economic crisis of 2008 and the subsequent austerity measures imposed across the European Union (EU) prompted new self-managed and social initiatives addressing the most pressing social and economic problems [1,2]
Some factors were related to women’s self-perceived fit to the principles of cooperatives, as well as their effects. This result is interesting because recent research on Spanish cooperatives showed that they are linked to entrepreneurial quality [66], which suggests that cooperatives can foster women’s entrepreneurial quality
To the cooperatives and policymakers, the findings suggest a set of measures that can boost these entrepreneurial ventures, including firstly the improvement of the knowledge of the cooperative model, since more than half of participants recognized an initial predisposition to this model
Summary
The economic crisis of 2008 and the subsequent austerity measures imposed across the European Union (EU) prompted new self-managed and social initiatives addressing the most pressing social and economic problems [1,2]. This issue has grown in importance considering previous research showing that business entrepreneurs are twice as likely to be male, while numbers of male and female social entrepreneurs were similar [6,7] If these organizations can act as a fast track for women to become entrepreneurs, they can be a springboard to female empowerment and economic development
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