BOOK TIP | Entrepreneurial women create great value for themselves and others

Women perform worse than men – or do they?
In the Research Handbook of Women’s Entrepreneurship and Value Creation, we meet a group of international researchers who are tired of performance and value creation in entrepreneurship often being limited to financial results.
The picture is much broader than that, they say.

The studies presented in the book show that entrepreneurial women do not perform worse than men.
Instead, they add value at multiple levels, including those operating in resource-poor environments.
The book is divided into four parts based on the values – beyond the economic – that women contribute: values at the individual level, the business level, the home and family level, and the societal level. At the individual level, it is about women having control over their assets and the power to make decisions about them.
It is a value that promotes personal development and increases quality of life. Business-level values are about access to resources, networks and institutional support that a woman acquires by being part of the business community.
In this section, we meet two Swedish contributions.
Annie Roos, from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, challenges the notion that women underperform compared to men.
She does so by seeing value as a process and not just as a result.
She draws on the stories of two female entrepreneurs from a rural Swedish community.
Nadia Arshad and Leona Achtenhagen, at Jönköping International Business School, have studied entrepreneurial women from the minority Hazaras in Pakistan to understand women’s entrepreneurship in resource-poor settings.
The study shows how collaboration is at the heart of starting and developing a venture.
But also how collaboration leads to other non-financial values at the business level. At the home and family level, the studies provide examples of how women’s entrepreneurship has led to changes in family dynamics.
For example, increased income often improves family well-being and quality of life.
Household attitudes towards women who choose to start their own business also improve.
They are seen as independent and entrepreneurial, which has a positive impact on attitudes and gender roles in the home.
Norwegian researcher Gry Agnete Alsos, at Nord University, investigates how immigrant women develop their entrepreneurial identities based on social motivation and frame of reference.
It turns out that the identities are strongly linked to their concerns for the family and the focus is rarely economic self-interest. The fourth and final part of the book deals with the values that entrepreneurial women contribute to society.
Increased employment and an increased supply of goods and services, of course.
But women’s entrepreneurship also changes attitudes and perceptions of women in a society, which affects gender norms and strengthens women’s status and independence.
The third Swedish contribution is by Hans Lundberg, from Linnaeus University.
He has studied women’s entrepreneurship in Mexico.
Their leadership qualities are often dialogical, relational, relatable, authentic and caring – which has great social value in society.
He argues that social value comes from concrete practices and is not something abstract or fluffy.
The research anthology is aimed at entrepreneurship researchers and policy makers.
The editors hope that it will provide useful knowledge that can result in learning, innovative approaches and evidence-based policy making to promote women’s entrepreneurship. And of course, contribute to gender-equal inclusive growth around the world. Title: Research Handbook of Women´s Entrepreneurship and Value Creation Author: Shumaila Yousafzai, Colette Henry, Monique Boddington, Shandana Sheikh, Alain Fayolle Publisher: Edward Elgar Year of publication: 2022 ISBN: 978-1-78990-136-8