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Since the late 1980s, much attention has been afforded to the notion of social exclusion and how governments might address this problem. One such solution has been the encouragement of self employment amongst those considered to be socially excluded with the aim of creating opportunity for individuals, generating new jobs and contributing to local economic regeneration. The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate the relationship between entrepreneurship and social exclusion by considering the potential for benefit dependent lone mothers to enter self employment in order to escape disadvantage.

A theoretical paper which draws upon the concepts of gender, enterprise and social exclusion which are then linked through an analysis of the possibilities which self employment may offer benefit dependent lone mothers to undertake an economically viable activity.

From the arguments explored here, it would appear that self employment is limited in terms of meeting the economic needs of these women, is unlikely to create new job opportunities or act as impetus to local regeneration and in fact, may encourage undeclared working for both the owners and employees in such enterprises.

Draws upon a range of diverse arguments to offer an original contribution to the social policy and entrepreneurship debate.

Women‐owned businesses are frequently described as under‐performing in that the majority remain small and marginal. The authors dispute this description; within this paper, it is argued that such performance profiles reflect the constrained performance of most small firms. The assertion that women owned firms under‐perform reflects a gendered bias within the entrepreneurial discourse where femininity and deficit are deemed coterminous. In addition, women‐owned firms are expected to under‐perform given expectations of female weakness in the context of male normativity and superiority. Accordingly, the aim of this paper is to critically evaluate the association between gender and business performance suggesting that this critique has implications for the broader development of our understanding of entrepreneuring behaviours.

This is a conceptual research note which explores the notion of performance and under‐performance in the context of gender.

It is argued that gendered socio‐economic positioning ensures that women‐owned businesses demonstrate constrained performance but this is not synonymous with under‐performance. Furthermore, ingrained epistemological gendered biases persist which portray women as flawed entrepreneurs despite the absence of convincing data regarding essential gendered differences between the performance of male and female entrepreneurs.

The paper suggests that far greater reflexive criticism is called for regarding epistemological assumptions which shape the current research agenda.

This discussion develops a critical analysis of the association between gender, performance and entrepreneuring.