Women Entrepreneurs: Choosing between Business and Family

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Introduction

When addressing topics related to female entrepreneurship, a global issue that has aroused the interest of researchers and scholars emerges: the growing incursion of women in the workplace, which on the one hand has reduced their private, family and domestic time, and has transformed it into public and productive time, and on the other has meant that women are forced to construct other identities, to identify with other roles. Specifically in the case of women entrepreneurs, there are dilemmas and conflicts in reconciling the different roles they must assume as moms, wives, homemakers and managers. The way in which these dilemmas are solved seems to impact directly on the size of female-owned firms.

This chapter presents the results of a research that addresses the case of women entrepreneurs in Colombia and that documents the ways in which they have reconciled their family and organizational commitments and the strategies used to this end.

1. Conceptual elements

To conduct this study, the conceptual framework developed by Gibb Dyer (1994) was selected. He develops an entrepreneurial career model based on four dimensions:

a. Career choice

This dimension formulates three factors that influence the decision to become an entrepreneur:

- Individual factors, on which certain issues have been traditionally, studied such as the need for control, motivation for achievement, the ability to take risks and tolerance for uncertainty. Other scholars find these psychological factors insufficient and have added other categories of analysis such as cognitive processes and social cognition phenomena. Additionally, some gender studies have suggested key differences in the orientations and motivations of men and women. Althoug...

... middle of paper ...

... In: G. N. Powell (Ed.), Handbook of Gender and Work, Thousand Oaks, CA, US: Stage

Hup, A. & Richardson, P. (1997) Business ownership as an economic option for middle income educated urban women in Bangladesh. Frontiers of Entrepreneurship. Research. Babson Park. Wellesley (Mass).

Romero, M. (1993) El empresariado femenino en España. Riesgo económico e identidad femenina. Thesis for the PhD degree in Sociology. Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

Sandín, B. (2003) “El estrés: un análisis basado en el papel de los factores sociales”, International Journal of Clinical and Health Psichology. 3 (001), 141 – 157

Stevenson, H.H. (1987) "General Management and Entrepreneurship", Working paper, Harvard University.

Vega, G. (2006) Familia y Empresa. In: Marchant, L. (ed) Actualizaciones para el Management y el Desarrollo Organizacional. Universidad de Viña del Mar, Chile

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