Why Study Women Entrepreneurship?

This information on female entrepreneurship has increased markedly in recent years. Research has focused on women business owners characteristics and development, women's motivations for starting and leading a business, women's leadership styles and management strategies; and barriers encountered by women business owners.
"Economists and policy makers (in Africa) cannot afford to ignore gender issues if they truly wish to follow a shared growth agenda "


All over the world, women entrepreneurship has become an important component of academic and policy conversation. This field presents several distinctive characteristics that differentiate it from men entrepreneurship. From a scientific point of view, the study of female entrepreneurship informs us not only about women behaviour, but also about entrepreneurial and human behaviour in general.
Varieties also exist across women entrepreneurs in different countries and between women who are involved in entrepreneurship and those who are not.


Studying female entrepreneurs sheds light on the linkages between entrepreneurship and wealth creation, employment choice and family dynamics, business creation and peace and many others.
Women's entrepreneurship needs to be studied separately for many reasons; the first being that women's entrepreneurship has been recognized during the last decade as an important untapped source of economic growth. Women entrepreneurs create new jobs for themselves and others; and by being different, they provide society with different solutions to management, organization and business problems as well as to the exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities.
Another reason is that the topic of women in entrepreneurship has been largely neglected both in society in general and in the social sciences. Not only have women lower participation rate in entrepreneurship than men but they also generally choose to start and manage firms in different industries than men tend to do.


Women's productive activities, particularly in industry, empower them economically and enable them to contribute to overall development. Women's entrepreneurial activities are not only a means for economic survival but also have positive social consequences for the women themselves and social environment.
Small and medium size enterprises (SMEs)  in particular, appear to be more popular with women entrepreneurs, as they allow flexibility and innovation. However in most developing countries, this potential has not optimally been realized. Because large numbers of women work in the informal sector, the value they add is not reflected in the national account.