Leveling the entrepreneurial playing field
Women’s Entrepreneurship in the 21st Century: An International Multi-Level Research Analysis edited by Kate V. Lewis, Colette Henry, Elizabeth J. Gatewood and John Watson

Extract

Why do businesses started by women tend to remain smaller, both in revenue and employees, than the businesses initiated by men? Why, in all countries surveyed, is the rate of men’s venture creation greater than women’s? Identifying the answers to these deceptively simple questions requires a serious, far reaching, academic exploration of the complex factors influencing women’s entrepreneurship. In 1999, a group of scholars launched a multi-university research consortium named the Diana Project. Since its founding, the Diana Project has engaged in comprehensive research, convened conferences, expanded its focus to include international studies, and published four books. The most recent volume (the subject of this review) derives from the 2012 Diana International Conference held in Perth, Australia. The Diana Project is continuing its work: the group met in Sweden in the summer of 2014.

Today, it is impossible to engage with questions concerning the global economy and social change and not be paying attention to women’s entrepreneurship. Jackie Vandenberg, writing in the Harvard Business Review (< https://hbr.org/2013/09/global-rise-of-female-entrepreneurs >), reported that in the period 2008–12 the number of times women entrepreneurs were mentioned in the global press soared six-fold. A consensus is emerging in international public policy circles that enabling and enhancing women’s contributions to business development, particularly through entrepreneurship, is key to growing global economic opportunities. In recognition of the obvious fact that women represent half of the world’s talent pool, the World Economic Forum asserts that:

… a nation’s competitiveness in the long term depends significantly on whether and how it educates and utilizes its women. (< https://agenda.weforum.org/topic/global-issues/gender-parity/ >)

Despite global awareness, data reported in Dell’s 2015 Global Women Entrepreneur Leader’s Scorecard demonstrates that gender-based differences continue to stifle the growth of women-owned businesses (< http://powermore.dell.com/gwelscorecard/ >). The Diana Project’s volume contextualizes the facts reported about women’s entrepreneurship by embedding those facts into a multi-scale framework analyzing the cultural, societal, and personal (including family) factors influencing women’s ability to participate fully and succeed in creating businesses.