Female Entrepreneurship: from Empiricism and Doctrine to Legal Regulation

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to determine the role of female entrepreneurship, the level of doctrinal reasoning and the need for legal regulation of this phenomenon. The paper demonstrates the significance of the women’s business segment and its positive dynamics. The author shows the negative impact of COVID-19 and the crisis in the economy concerning the development of women’s entrepreneurship. The data paper provides data concerning the proportion of women among the heads of organizations. The presence of «female» potential for small business is emphasized. The study identifies the trend for women to acquire the status of being self-employed. It is established that in science, representatives of sociology show the greatest interest in studying the problems of women’s entrepreneurship; less often researchers are interested in psychology and economics. Legal research in this field is very limited. It is noted that the legal doctrinal basis of women’s entrepreneurship in Russia has not been formed; there are practically no in-depth developments of the concept of women’s entrepreneurship, its types, and features of implementation. The paper describes the main directions of theoretical research of this problem. These include: the specifics of women’s entrepreneurship and barriers to its development; the «entry» of women into business and its management strategies; the attitude of family members to women’s entrepreneurship and the role balance. The author draws attention to the methodological basis of the study of women’s entrepreneurship, the peculiarity of which is an active appeal to such sociological methods as questionnaires and interviewing. The author performed an independent sociological survey and presented its results. The author expresses an opinion concerning the need to legitimize women’s entrepreneurship, develop a legal mechanism for regulating women’s business and an integral ecosystem of support for women’s entrepreneurship, proposing an algorithm of actions in this direction. It is concluded that when building a system of legal regulation, it is important to take into account the foreign experience that has brought results, while preserving the national differences of Russian women’s entrepreneurship.