Women business owners at the dawn of the twenty-first century

Abstract

Until within the last decade, the literature on female small business owners, self-employed women and women entrepreneurs have been limited (Stevenson, 1986; Charboneau, 1981). Most research in these areas has been carried out without the female gender as a focus and instead was concentrating on men (Hisrich and Brush, 1984; Taylor, 1988). Where studies on women were carried out, there has been a notable absence of any attempt to achieve representation in the range of factors that affect business ownership (Neider, 1987; Pellegrino and Reece, 1982). In addition, few studies have provided comparative analyses on different races of women. The literature review that follows takes a look at the topics that have been covered in research on women business owners. The topics include: a comparative analysis of research on men and women business owners, the psychological characteristics of women business owners, the personal value systems of women business owners, the sociological characteristics of women business owners, the success factors of businesses and trends and other literature on the topic of business owners. This article ends with a critical look at the current issues that are of paramount importance to women business owners.