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To effectively train women to be successful in business, courses are required which recognise the differing strengths and approaches of women and build on these rather than forcing women into traditional, male‐orientated roles. Courses allowing for unisex training, with flexible timetabling to cater for family commitments and a higher concentration on building business skills rather than instilling knowledge, would greatly benefit women setting up in business. With the recession in the UK having broken down many traditional industrial and technical barriers there are tremendous opportunities for women to break into business; appropriate training needs to be devised to save losing many good ideas.

Self‐employment makes an important contribution to a nation′s economy, women are turning to it in increasing numbers but still face hurdles in their quest for independence, autonomy and job satisfaction. An Australian survey by questionnaire (commissioned in Sydney by the New South Wales Women′s Advisory Council) of 357 self‐employed women revealed that they faced three types of barriers: entry, operational and personal. Entry barriers revolved around confidence to start the business, necessary start‐up finance, and adequate sources of assistance and advice. Operational barriers concerned finance, lack of assistance and advice, lack of skills in marketing and finance, and assistance in developing business. Personal problems were sense of isolation, lack of mentors, tutors or counsellors, need for support of other businesses (especially suppliers) and colleagues, managing a home and a business, self‐management, and child care. Recommendations are made for a phased system of support services related to style, stage and needs of individual small business proprietors.

Against a backdrop of global economic recession, high production costs and increased international competition, the performance, survival and growth of small businesses is high on the global political agenda. However, like many other nations, Ireland is lagging behind in terms of a co‐ordinated approach to the specific challenge of supporting women‐owned ventures, hence possibly reducing their opportunity to act as economic agents. Based on a review of growth‐oriented support programmes for women in business in Ireland, this short viewpoint seeks to identifiy a number of gaps in the current support system and to propose a range of possible alternative intervention strategies that the authors believe can help facilitate business growth.

Using secondary data, a review of the current government support programmes was carried out. Further, evidence obtained through an in‐depth qualitative study of 33 women entrepreneurs in Ireland and Northern Ireland which identified a number of specific barriers inhibiting the development of these firms was used.

The analysis of current government practices revealed that whilst women are making progress in starting more businesses in Ireland, the current statistics indicate that they still tend to start small and stay small. This points towards a need to reassess and understand the issue of growth among women entrepreneurs and, in doing so, develop new mechanisms that can have real impact on growth‐oriented women‐owned firms whilst also respecting and supporting those who choose not to grow their business. The qualitative study identified a number of specific barriers, which hinder the development of their firms. These included financial, regulatory and employability challenges; a lack of management skills and confidence. Motherhood and personal goals were also found to be inhibiting factors for women entrepreneurs.

The paper proposes a number of possible government and personal intervention strategies to overcome the identified barriers. These include encouraging lending within the small growth sectors, conducting a regional skills audit, reducing the administration and paperwork associated with trading and accessing support and develop customised training and up‐skilling designed to meet the specific needs of women entrepreneurs.

The paper argues that government agencies in Ireland must now act on the evidence provided and confront the issues affecting women entrepreneurs.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the global dearth of training options to support women entrepreneurs and to forward a set of recommendations to better meet the learning needs of women who own their businesses.

The paper provides a thorough literature review on the topic, which examines the learning and training experiences of female entrepreneurs in a wide range of disparate societies.

The absence of leaning, training and professional development opportunities for women entrepreneurs is found to be an almost universal phenomenon. In the few examples where training has been planned and provided, the results have been very significant. Further, women and their businesses are disadvantaged by the lack of training available and that this comes at a high cost to their businesses.

The implications are that countries are hindering economic activity, growth and prosperity by ignoring the professional development needs of women business owners.

The topic of professional development opportunities for women entrepreneurs, especially a comprehensive international comparison, appears to be a first in the literature. The value of the piece is that agencies supporting small business and/or women can identify ways in which they can improve service delivery and outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to offer an account of women business owners in the Middle East and North Africa.

This five‐country research study included face‐to‐face interviews with women entrepreneurs in Bahrain, Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates.

The findings revealed that the women surveyed were operating across a range of business sectors and, in some cases, with employment levels ahead of most women‐owned firms in Western Europe and North America. Most of the women surveyed were trading internationally and were growth‐oriented.

This research offers valuable practical insights for policy makers, women's business organizations and financial institutions.

The paper offers an unprecedented level of new detailed information about women business owners and their enterprises in the region.

What are the unique challenges for daughters who inherit ownership in family enterprise? How does their path to ownership influence their impact? What dilemmas are associated with their ownership roles? How can women best respond to the challenges of ownership? This chapter offers preliminary answers to these questions, including suggestions for enhancing the ability of women owners—especially daughters—to engage constructively with the businesses they inherit.

We focus on daughters serving in three distinctive roles: (1) as “operating owners” working in the family company and pursuing careers and leadership roles in management; (2) as “governing owners” serving as chairs or directors on the board of the business, or as members of other governance forums such as a family council, an owners’ council or the board of the family’s philanthropic foundation; and, (3) as “engaged owners” who are neither in operational or governance roles but are keenly connected to the enterprise’s success and continuity.

Our fundamental thesis is that the active participation of daughters as operating, governing or engaged owners enhances the continuity of the enterprise by expanding the pool of managerial and governing talent available to the business and by fostering inclusion, commitment and unity among the owners. We conclude by describing three interventions that can facilitate the dilemmas daughters face as owners and empower them to engage constructively with the family enterprise: (1) education, (2) mentorship and network support, and (3) well designed structures and roles.

Entrepreneurship institutions exhibit substantial gender discrimination despite worldwide efforts to decrease the phenomenon. The MENA area has a low percentage of women entrepreneurs since little is known about women’s desire to start their businesses. The authors use the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to explain what influences women's propensity toward entrepreneurship and what factors discourage them.

TPB is a psychological theory explaining how individuals act in certain situations. The authors created their database by using a systematic questionnaire. Overall, 350 women entrepreneurs contributed to their dataset. Finally, the authors used structural equation modeling to verify their hypotheses.

This study helps them to shed light to better understand the dynamics of Entrepreneurial Intention, in women from Lebanon. The authors do not find any relationship between lack of knowledge, funding, networking and entrepreneurial startup intention for Lebanese women. The role of dynamic capabilities in the entrepreneurial landscape of Lebanon, particularly for women, is substantially highlighted by the full mediation observed in the relationship between lack of knowledge and entrepreneurial start-up intentions. The findings discovered that these capabilities could fully mediate the negative impact of lack of networking on the intention to commence entrepreneurial ventures.

This research illustrates and explains how dynamic capabilities mediate the relationship between women entrepreneurs' challenges and their intention to start a business in the Lebanese context.

In this chapter, Lituchy, Reavley, and Bryer report on their interviews with women entrepreneurs from the Czech Republic, Poland, and Japan. Eastern European respondents expressed a desire for and the importance of business training. Many who had attempted to get bank loans were refused for lack of collateral or because their business plans were inadequate. Japanese respondents felt that experience was most valuable. They stated that gender adversely affected their financing prospects. Human resources issues as well as dealing with clients or suppliers from other cultures were concerns for all the women. Discussion and implications are presented.

Purpose – An investigation of how women construct their entrepreneurial identities as owners of high growth technology ventures within the context of business incubation.

Methodology/approach – A qualitative case study approach is adopted to enable the development of an in-depth and nuanced picture of high technology business incubation.

Findings – The women oscillated between trying to emulate the behaviour of their male colleagues within the incubator as the prevailing ‘entrepreneurial identity’ was embedded in masculinity; thus, to achieve credibility and legitimacy, the women attempted to deny associations with femininity by undertaking a metaphorical sex change. Once, however, the firms became successful, they again felt comfortable displaying elements of their femininity as the tensions surrounding entrepreneurial and feminine characterizations could be negated by demonstrations of business competence.

Research limitations/implications – The documented limitations of case study research are noted. There are a number of implications surrounding the utility and accessibility of incubation for female entrepreneurs and the underlying assumption that these are spaces specifically for male entrepreneurs.

Practical implications – It is essential to critically evaluate current policy initiatives and managerial strategies informing current incubation practices.

Social implications – Gender disadvantage is reproduced within business incubators.

Originality/value of chapter – There are few explorations of the accessibility of business incubators to encourage and support female entrepreneurship.

The growth in women’s entrepreneurship that has been witnessed recently in regions such as the USA has been lauded by scholars and policymakers alike. However, women continue to start businesses in sectors that reflect the kind of work that women do in the home, such as cooking, cleaning and catering. Research shows that women’s ‘choices’ for female-typed businesses are driven by their need to accommodate domestic responsibilities – that is, caring for children. This raises questions about whether women without such responsibilities are freer to start businesses in the types of industries (e.g. high technology) that have long been dominated by men. Furthermore, given pronatalist assumptions, there are questions about the extent to which childfree women operating businesses in male-dominated sectors are perceived as legitimate by their business relations. Taking these questions as a starting point, this chapter examines the way in which the intersections of parental status (mother/other) and gender role (in)congruence (congruent/incongruent) make the entrepreneurial experiences of women working in male-dominated/masculinised industries and sectors qualitatively different from the experiences of women working in female-dominated/feminised industries. Focus is upon the resources (i.e. social capital) that women entrepreneurs are able to secure from their social network, for the ability to secure such resources is a prerequisite to business success.