Good Afternoon and welcome back! Today’s focus is going to be on the set-backs women face in small business and entrepreneurship. This is a topic of great concern to me because I am constantly faced with the monster of failure. I was sure that my research would lead me to something like, gender biases in financial backing from banks. I also assumed there was some cosmic reason I face so many trials in my own small business. However, my research has been very eye opening on the contrary. I researched a scholarly peer reviewed article called, “Business as Plan B.” by Sarah Thebaud. This journal article was written about women just like me. The focus of this article was to point out the reason women enter entrepreneurship in the first place. In our society it is a norm that women are the primary caretakers of children and family. More often than not it is a work-family conflict women have with the wage/salary workforce that drives them to entrepreneurship. Thus owning a small business becomes a fallback strategy for balancing work and family. (Thebaud, 2015)

One setback women face using the Plan B strategy is often low growth and revenue in their business. This makes them no better or even worse off financially, than remaining in the wage/ salary workforce. Another setback to the fallback strategy is women often don’t set high goals to maximize growth. Compared to our male counterparts women are said to lack the social network, managerial skills and financial capital, which are vital to start-up businesses. When women open a business they are typically segregated into crowded, competitive industries such as food service, retail and interpersonal care. Being forced into these industries makes these women owned businesses financially vulnerable. (Thebaud, 2015)

It is said that women entrepreneurs often feel inadequate because of the gender norm in society a mindset in which entrepreneurship is masculine. In an environment rich with women executives and managerial positions, women entrepreneurs are said to thrive. However, this is not usually the case in the United States. There is much headway to be made in the opportunities afforded to women in the American culture. Many senior or executive positions in the U.S. are held by men because one simply has to be, “married,” to their work to hold this type of position. (Thebaud, 2015) In conclusion, I feel there is a deep correlation to the wage/ salary workforce and women entrepreneurship. It can be concluded that it is women themselves that often, “shoot themselves in the foot,” when it comes to entrepreneurial set-backs. Women leave the workforce hoping to find balance with work and family and end up finding a new set of problems.

My research this week was fairly easy to come by as soon as I narrowed down the subject header. Again my frustration was with the several revisions I had to make to my subject line, to find a relevant article to this week’s topic. Finding a scholarly peer reviewed article is something I am familiar and comfortable with. I find myself searching this type of information above all others, in all my classes.

This week’s focus on setbacks is somewhat comforting to me. I am finding in my research that I have fallen into just about every statistic when it comes to women in small business. Although that may not be such a great thing, it’s comforting. I think understanding where you are and where you’ve been is the only way to find where you are going. Next, I am hoping to focus more on success strategies. Perhaps, there is research that I need to be conducting on women friendly programs for entrepreneurs.

References

Thebaud, S. (2015). Business as Plan B. Administrative Science Quarterly; Vol. 60 Issue 4, p671-711.