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The welfare states of Scandinavia have been regarded as forerunners of gender equality, but structural barriers to women's participation in the labour market may discriminate against women and create opportunity costs delimiting women's career choices. Family policies are defined to include maternity/paternity leave, benefits, childcare and leave to take care of sick children. The aim of this paper is to increase awareness and elucidate the impact of welfare policies on women's entrepreneurship because it may impact on women's entrepreneurial behaviour. Hence, it seeks to investigate the reasons underlying this apparent anomaly so that future policies in Scandinavia and Europe may be tailored to suit the needs of female entrepreneurs.

The study uses publicly available statistical data combined with unique survey data from a sample of 1,000 sole proprietors (men and women), all members of the Danish Association for the Self‐employed, to identify the problems encountered by female entrepreneurs. The survey findings are illustrated with three interviews with female entrepreneurs that have been published in the Danish newspapers discussing the problems encountered by self‐employed female entrepreneurs.

Even though the various Scandinavian models provide for ample maternity leave, benefits and childcare, on the whole, the Nordic Welfare Model is too heavily grounded in the ideals of employment favouring employment over entrepreneurship. For example, in Denmark, a sole proprietor is not allowed to work whilst on maternity leave. If she does so, her maternity allowance is reduced. This may be tantamount to closing the business down if you have a child, and may account for the fact that women are generally much older than men when starting a business. The majority of women in the survey are critical of the maternity leave system and 30 percent perceive the childcare system as a significant barrier to starting a business.

Future research needs to compare the Danish evidence with that from other Nordic countries to establish whether the problem is restricted to Denmark. Additionally, research should focus on identifying whether child‐bearing and ‐rearing influences on the age at which women start a business.

So far, it has been taken for granted that the initiation of public childcare would facilitate increased entrepreneurship among women. This study shows that this is not necessarily so, and that there is a schism between welfare models that facilitate employment and those that facilitate entrepreneurship.

The second Frankfurt Career Study was conducted in 2017 in East and West Germany to analyze the impact of motherhood on female professional advancement in the specific national context of Germany. In addition, this study aims to present a unique perspective of the similarities and dissimilarities between the Western and Eastern parts of the country.

The research is presented as a three-stage statistical approach based on quantitative data generated from a survey conducted among 2,130 working mothers. In the first step, the authors performed a multiple correspondence analysis to explore the relationships between important categorical variables. Using the object scores obtained in the first step, we then ran a hierarchical cluster analysis, followed by the third and last step: using the k-means clustering method to partition the survey respondents into groups.

The authors found that working mothers in Germany are distributed according to four clusters mainly described by demographics and orientation toward work. East Germany has been found as a more egalitarian context than West Germany with respect to family system arrangements. However, the upper bound of the sample in West Germany presented an atypical female breadwinner model in high-performance households.

The authors want to contribute to previous investigations on the topic by providing a more comprehensive view of the phenomenon, especially comparing the two different family systems and social norms from the Eastern and Western parts of the country. The authors ask whether and how career perspectives and female labor supply are influenced by drivers such as work–family conflict determinants, working mothers demographics, partner support and employer support.

This study aims to examine the two (and perhaps the most) important outcome variables of the interface between work and family, namely, overall job performance and parental functioning, in the context of performance appraisal.

Each of 844 respondents (managers or self-employed who supervise workers, half of them men) evaluated a briefly portrayed employed married parent on his/her job performance and parental functioning. Male and female respondents were randomly and equally allocated to one of 16 research conditions. They evaluated an employed married parent portrayed as a mother or a father, who increased or decreased his/her weekly workhours following the mother's return from maternity leave, invested relatively high or low effort in his/her work and exhibited relatively high or low work achievements.

Parents who invest a relatively high effort in their work were evaluated as having a higher level of job performance than those who invest a relatively low effort. Parents who exhibit relatively high work achievements were evaluated as having higher levels of job performance and parental functioning than those who exhibit relatively low work achievements. Parents who increased their weekly workhours following the mother's return from maternity leave were evaluated as having a lower level of parental functioning than those who decreased their weekly workhours.

This is a rare study implementing a factorial design with five independent variables (parent's time investment in work following the mother's return from maternity leave, his/her relative work effort, his/her relative work achievements, parent's gender and the evaluator’s gender) never manipulated simultaneously before.

Sex discrimination is embedded in the personal income tax system of the UK which favours married men and operates against married women. The view that women are men's dependants, institutionalised in the tax system, offends very many women and should have no place in a society committed to equality between the sexes.

Research investigating female entrepreneurs and their networking relationships has developed considerably over the past two decades. There are, however, few Sri Lankan studies that have specifically focussed on female entrepreneurs in terms of their social networks. This paper aims to examine the important influences on these female entrepreneurs’ networking behaviour within small businesses in the tourism sector.

Having established that the social constructionist approach is most suitable for this study, in-depth narrative interviews and observations were deemed a particularly suitable research tool. In total, 14 female entrepreneurs were purposively approached and interviewed. Narrative analysis was used to analyze and interpret qualitative data, which were organized with the assistance of QSR NVivo 10, a software programme.

Competing family responsibilities and business matters (being a good mum and dutiful wife), culture and societal expectations, running home-based business and building trust were found as main influences on female entrepreneurial networking behaviours. The majority revealed stressful times trying to combine the business with multiple roles and societal expectations.

Applications of the model in female entrepreneurial networking behaviour are suggested, within and beyond the context of the small business tourism industry in Sri Lanka.

This study enriches the understanding of social networks and social capital based on the experience of Sri Lankan female entrepreneurs, which is influenced by contextual factors of identity, gender and culture.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the rather large difference in the take-up of the cash-for-childcare (CFC) benefit between Norway and Sweden.

A quantitative approach is employed, including the analysis of descriptive statistics of data on parents’ attitudes concerning the distribution of paid work and care and a robust regression analysis of data on parents’ behaviour regarding the distribution of paid work and care.

The results show that attitudes regarding childcare and mothers’ and fathers’ employment differ in the two countries. Swedish parents support public childcare and a gender equal employment distribution more than Norwegians. Thereby, attitudinal differences explain why Norwegian parents use the benefit more frequently. The findings indicate that in Sweden, parents’ socioeconomic background affects the duration of public childcare to a lesser extent than in Norway. Nevertheless, the economic incentives of the CFC benefit are more attractive for families with lower socioeconomic status. This explains why Swedes respond less to the incentives of the CFC benefit than Norwegians.

While previous research has focussed on the effect of policies on the take-up of the CFC benefit, this study shows that parents’ attitudes and behaviour are important explanatory variables to explain differences in the take-up of the benefit.

Growing a business in tough times isn't easy, but it can be done.

The paper aims to shed light on the factors that affect female entrepreneurship at the macro-environment level and motherhood in the Kingdom of Bahrain.

Drawing on the 5M model and an institutional approach, this paper uses a qualitative semi-structured in-depth interview approach with 44 female entrepreneurs.

The results uncover several findings highlighting the important influence of the macro-environment on female entrepreneurs in Bahrain, grouped under formal (complex regulations, double employment constraints and financial obligations) and informal (societal perceptions) institutions, as well as the nuanced role of motherhood factors.

The study addresses the motherhood aspect of female entrepreneurs comprising household, family, child/elderly care and societally perceived female duties. Therefore, it constitutes the primary building block in a more gender-aware approach to female entrepreneurship. Addressing societal perceived gender roles leads to a comprehensive perspective on the study of female entrepreneurs.

Results of a comparative study of maternity/parental leave measures in five European countries indicate that as long as there is no change in society's assessment of gainful employment and household chores, women in all countries will be burdened with this contradiction.