Journal of Research on Women and Gender

Entrepreneurship is seen as a viable and powerful job engine for the U.S. economy. In 2008, 18.7% of workers 18-64 were either an owner-manager of an established business or involved in early-stage entrepreneurial activity For many women, entrepreneurship has been hailed as a welcoming workplace with great opportunity. Studies and growth projections by government and trade organizations such as the Small Business Administration (SBA), the Department of Labor, and the Center for Women's Business Research indicate that the ranks of women entrepreneurs and their businesses are growing rapidly. As of 2008, women-owned businesses in the U.S. (defined as 50% or more women-owned) accounted for 40% of all privately-owned firms, generated $1.9 trillion in sales and employed 13 million people (Center for Women's Business Research, 2009). The SBA reported that high numbers of women want to become entrepreneurs and their ranks are growing at a rate six times faster than the number of self-employed men (U.S. SBA, 1998). Others have reported that the number of women-owned businesses in the U.S. has risen by 50% since 1997 (Clegg, 2004). There have been numerous publications about women entrepreneurs and their businesses in the trade literature over the past decade. provide examples of successful women entrepreneurs, their companies and expected future growth of the field. With titles such as ―The Sky's the Limit‖ and ―Make Way for Female Entrepreneurs,‖ the articles often paint a glowing picture of female success in 170 the rapidly evolving small business arena. In contrast, the scholarly literature has reached few solid conclusions, is often contradictory, and continues to provide little practical direction for female entrepreneurs wanting to establish or grow small businesses or policy makers seeking to improve the entrepreneurial business climate. This paper provides a critical assessment of the main themes found in the female entrepreneurship literature and the reasons why the research stream still has have far to go. This paper seeks to organize, report, and critically assess key findings from the scholarly literature in order to provide greater insights into female entrepreneurship and address gaps in the literature. The literature review approach of this paper is significant, because few studies have attempted to categorize the literature in a succinct way that focuses on the big-picture of female entrepreneurship. While much of the literature reviewed here can be found in the business entrepreneurship literature, this paper also provides data drawn from economics, social sciences, and other disciplines. …