Proceedings of the Global Conference on Gender Studies
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Women Entrepreneurs in Turbulent Times Results of a Cross European Sociological Research
Orsolya Gergely, Oborni Katalin
ABSTRACT:
Women-owned businesses are still in the minority in the European Union, and the obstacles faced by female entrepreneurs are vast and often very different from those experienced by the male entrepreneurs. The COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the energy crisis, has even worsened women entrepreneurs’ situation for maintaining their businesses and posed further challenges in reconciling work and private life. Entrepreneurs have to face how to survive crises and adjust their businesses to new circumstances to become more resilient, remain competitive and sustainable in a time of crises. The challeges caused by Covid-19 and the energy crisis highlighted the need for women entrepreneurs to resilient, to improve their digital skills, and be more effective in appling crisis management strategies. A new insight is crucial for more efficient entrepreneurial development for women through research. The research results – in the long run – also could help to empower women entrepreneurs, especially those with fewer opportunities, facing obstacles to receiving meaningful support in implementing and further developing their business plans. A cross-country research result could help identify these kinds of needs and to give a solid base for developing tailored activities focused on innovative and practical solutions for supporting the upskilling and resiliency of women entrepreneurs is essential.What is the short-term effect of the various waves of the pandemic and the energy crisis on the operation of companies led by women? What is the individual and societal level gender implications of coping with crises as a women entrepreneur? What strategies women entrepreneurs (can) apply to overcome the difficulties caused by the crises? In these challenging times, it is of utmost importance to empower women entrepreneurs, especially those with fewer opportunities, facing obstacles to receiving meaningful support in implementing and further developing their business plans. Therefore, we are particularly interested what kind of support has the women entrepreneurs received and/or used for coping with the crises, and overcoming difficulties? What kind of support (programmes, policy instruments, initiatives) do women entrepreneurs need for coping with crises, overcoming difficulties?’ In order to be able to answers these questions, we propose a cross national sociological analysis based on a mixed methodology to give a valid picture of the situation of female entrepreneurs across Europe. Between March-May 2023 more than 500 female entrepreneur were asked through an online survey, and we also interviewes with semi-structured in-depht intwervies female entrepreneurs (50 person) and experts and business angels (20 person) from 7 European countries (Bulgaria, Hungary, Finland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain). In our analysis, we rely on the ‘agency and capability’ conceptual framework (initially developed by Sen (1992, quoted in Hobson et al. 2011) to examine how individuals can convert the multiple resources (referred to as conversion factors) of individuals (i.e., human capital, income, gender, age, family and friend network, and resources) and the normative elements of society (i.e., norms, social rights, the media, social policy, etc.) into ‘agency freedom’ (Hobson et al., 2011). The research is conducted as part of a 3-year long Erasmus+ project launched at the end of 2022.
keywords: entrepreneurship, women entrepreneurs, policrisis, postcovid, resilience