Old-School Gender Values in a New Labour Model: A Case Study of Women's Entrepreneurship in Israel

Abstract

This chapter analyses the issues of old-school gender values in a new labour model focusing on a case study of female entrepreneurship in Israel. The modern labour market is characterised by the transition from traditional employment to novel employment models. The literature points at some similarities between male and female entrepreneurs and their motives; yet it is often argued that women, unlike men, are more influenced by intransient motives, such as the search for work-life balance or financial independence. Entrepreneurship in Israel is synonymous with the high-tech sector, which is seen as prestigious, lucrative and essentially masculine. The current study aims to reveal the features of women's entrepreneurship in Israel. It focuses on those women who have chosen to establish small businesses. These features allow portraying how women use entrepreneurship to shape their work-life balance and how this discourse is anchored in the socio-cultural Israeli context. The findings of the study suggest that the structure of the traditional labour market is replicated in the new one, i.e., while women do become entrepreneurs, they do so by returning to traditionally “feminine” fields, using this employment as part of their mothering (placing work as secondary to the home and allowing home demands to bleed into work hours, etc.).