Female Entrepreneurship

Female entrepreneurship, and, in particular, the contribution of their ventures to aggregate economic activity has gained increasing attention over recent years in terms of theory, practice and policy. This concise book explores how women fit into the contemporary entrepreneurial discourse by recognizing that gender intersects with, and influences, women’s experience of entrepreneurship.

The book is novel in that it considers women to be a heterogeneous group and as such acknowledges that ethnicity, culture, class and education will all influence and intersect with female entrepreneurship. As a consequence, it explores issues ranging from theoretical relationships between the constructs of gender and entrepreneurship to more empirical work on how entrepreneurship might act as an empowering change agent for women. In order to address the Euro-US centric assumptions underpinning the influence of gender upon entrepreneurship, a chapter is dedicated to the role of entrepreneurship in empowering Palestine women.

This book will be important supplementary reading on entrepreneurship, small business management and women’s/gender studies courses - it will prove particularly useful to women moving towards starting their own business as well as postgraduate students researching the topic for the first time.

Maura McAdam is Senior Lecturer in Management at Queen’s University Belfast, UK. She is an Editorial Board Member of the International Small Business Journal (ISBJ), as well as an invited Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) and elected Board Member of the ISBE (Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship). Maura has a broad practical foundation from her work in industry prior to entering academia