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The purpose of this paper is to investigate alternative measures to better understand and measure success for self-employed mothers in addition to the usual financial indicators.

The present study is a comparative analysis of time spent at work and undertaking childcare by female workers with children in Spain between 2009 and 2010, using a combination of descriptive statistics and linear regression analysis based on the Time-Use Survey 2009-2010.

The results of the paper indicate that self-employed working mothers tend to spend more time with their children when these are under the age of ten, and that they work longer hours than salaried mothers.

This paper has some limitations due to the quantitative approach to secondary data. Further qualitative research could clarify some of the findings; moreover the study is based on Spain, so extending to other countries would help validate the results.

Policy makers, in general – but more specifically in high unemployment scenarios – can facilitate self-employment for both men and women to reduce unemployment and to offer workers the prospect of a more balanced life.

This research contributes to the existing literature, which fosters a more holistic approach to the analysis of female-run ventures by measuring performance using not only economic indicators, but also personal achievements.

Self-employment is often viewed as a more desirable work arrangement than working as an employee for a firm. Women are pushed into self-employment due to organizational factors, such as a shrinking workforce or limited job opportunities, while being attracted to self-employment by the many psychological and social benefits (e.g., independence, flexibility, work-life balance, job satisfaction). Despite more women moving into self-employment, this type of employment still has different financial consequences for men and women. This article investigates whether a pay gap exists for self-employed women after controlling for industry, occupation, and hours worked and seeks to quantify the gender wage gap for the self-employed. A sample of 467 self-employed independent contractors in the United States was examined from the 2008 National Study of the Changing Workforce. The results indicate a large financial disparity between self-employed women and men. On average men earned $54,959 as compared to women who earned on average $28,554. Regardless of the parity in education, work experience, number of hours worked, or occupations, women earn less than men in self-employment. Findings suggest the existence of the glass cage‐a phenomenon whereby self-employed women earn significantly less than self-employed men with limited abilities to narrow the economic inequality.

The purpose of this paper is to study the determinants of wages and the labor market success of two kinds of entrepreneurial women in Germany: self‐employed and salaried businesswomen, and investigate whether ethnicity is important in these challenging jobs.

Using Lee's technique, the paper first estimates the probabilities of being in self‐employment, a salaried businesswoman, working in other non‐entrepreneurial jobs, and not working at all with a multinomial logit, and accordingly adjust the wage regressions for selection and heteroscedasticity. By employing data from the German Socio‐economic Panel one can differentiate among different types of self‐employment and business entrepreneurship, control for human capital and labor market structures, and estimate wages for native and immigrant women aged 20 to 65. The subject scope includes literature on entrepreneurship, self‐employment, gender‐edge, and immigrant earnings assimilation.

Self‐employment offers businesswomen a lucrative avenue with higher monetary rewards, albeit for a shorter spell. If salaried businesswomen went into self‐employment, they would receive considerably higher wages and for at least 30 years. However, if self‐employed businesswomen went into salaried jobs, their wages would decline. This suggests that it is the self‐employment sector that offers better opportunities and monetary success, but not many businesswomen go into it. In these two entrepreneurial outlets human capital, years‐since‐migration and ethnicity are not significant.

Future research should overcome the cross‐sectional limitation and take advantage of the panel aspect.

Many qualified, highly educated and talented women are not part of the labor market and the entrepreneurial world. Germany should encourage these women to work, as it needs skilled workers and a stronger entrepreneurial sector. Financial disparities still exist between West and East Germany.

The novelty comes from asserting that the entrepreneurial spirit can also exist in salaried jobs. The added value is the new empirical evidence on the importance of self‐employment in Germany, where women fare well and success does not depend on ethnicity.

This paper aims to explore gender differences in terms of self-employment for US Millennials, relating them to working from home as well as other factors.

The authors use a population-based survey, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, which allows to compare home-based vs non-home-based self-employed women and men on a wide variety of characteristics. Descriptive analyses reveal the unconditional relationships between the covariates of interest, and the authors use ordinary least squares regression to reveal the conditional correlations between working from home and earnings for both women and men.

The authors find that working from home is highly negatively correlated with earnings for women, but not for men, and that working from home may trump the other characteristics typically associated with lower earnings.

The regression subsample is relatively small (n = 245), leading to omitted variable bias in the regression. The “working-from-home” variable is potentially endogenous. The small sample size does not allow the authors to use detailed information on the self-employment industry. Future research should focus on finding larger samples and a way to instrument for working from home.

Work/life trends and communications technology have made working from home more prevalent (Mateyka et al., 2012). It is important for researchers and policymakers to understand the gendered implications of basing a business at home.

The study is the first to use population-based data to focus specifically on gender gaps in earnings of self-employed Millennials in relation to working from home.

The purpose of this paper is to promote better understanding of different women entrepreneurs and self-employed women with regard to their educational level and field of study. Foremost, the aim is providing detailed knowledge about the phenomenon of women self-employed chemists in R & D sectors and throwing light not only on the single women but also on the general conditions they are working in and their opportunities to get ahead.

The interdisciplinary research team followed an integrated research approach and combined qualitative with quantitative methods. By focussing on motives and causes of women self-employed chemists, this paper refers to the findings of two sub-studies, an online survey on self-employed (female and male) chemists in Germany and a qualitative study on the basis of biographical interviews tracing the professional biographies of women self-employed chemists. Moreover, the findings are analysed based on other sub-studies, like the analysis of the (start-up) conditions within the chemical industry and a discourse analysis of a well-known chemical periodical.

It was found that the differences between female and male chemists turning self-employed or starting a business are less pronounced than the differences between male and female founders, in general. Research demonstrates that women chemists do have high qualifications and if they become entrepreneurs, the main cause for that is escaping their organisational employment. Being entrepreneurially active, women chemists might work more satisfactorily, at least they are able to surround the glass ceiling.

This paper seeks to fill the gap of limited in-depth information on knowledge about female entrepreneurs and self-employed women with an academic background in chemistry. Focussing on one single field of study and profession of female entrepreneurs is, in that way, unique, as the research has looked on professionals who are not predestined for entry in entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this study is to test two possible explanations for persistent income disparity between male and female self‐employed professionals. First, men are more likely than women to be motivated by the potential for high income to establish a professional practice. Second, men are more likely than women to adopt a thinking‐over‐feeling cognitive decision‐making style.

This study uses a gender role/career motivation model to develop a set of hypotheses that explain observed gender‐based income disparity among self‐employed professionals. Hypotheses were tested using multivariate regression analysis with data drawn from a large‐scale national survey of male and female veterinarians in private practice.

Male veterinarians showed less empathy toward their clients and were more likely to use a thinking‐over‐feeling decision‐making style than were female veterinarians. Also, practice income was greater for male veterinarians with high client empathy (CE) and feeling‐over‐thinking decision‐making style than for male veterinarians with low CE and thinking‐over‐feeling decision‐making style. However, there was no significant difference in practice income between female veterinarians with high CE and feeling‐over‐thinking decision‐making style and female veterinarians with low CE and thinking‐over‐feeling decision‐making style.

While this study was limited to American veterinarians, future research on income disparity should be expanded to include other self‐employed professionals and/or other national settings.

This study contributes to research on gender‐based income disparity among self‐employed professionals by examining underlying factors that potentially contribute to these differences such as motives for establishing the practice and the practice owner's decision‐making style.

In spite of numerous political initiatives, the proportion of self-employed women in Germany has stagnated. This paper aims to offer a new perspective on this problem. The investigation and data gathered about job and life satisfaction of women with families can provide information on the reasons for starting a business, and the low participation of women in entrepreneurial activity.

After a literature review, representative German panel data is analysed to investigate the job and life satisfaction of full- and part-time self-employed women with a family.

Self-employed women with families who work full-time are more satisfied with their jobs than those who work part-time. There is no statistically significant difference between these two groups with respect to their life satisfaction.

An implication of the results suggests new ideas and a new focus by policy makers and politicians when trying to increase the quantity of women with families engaging in self-employment. A limitation is that a lack of “within” variation in the data means that the panel nature of the survey cannot be usefully incorporated into the investigation.

Until now, there is limited research about the work and life satisfaction of women with a family comparing full- and part-time self-employment. This analysis is potentially valuable because the number of part-time self-employed women is substantially higher than the number of full-time self-employed women. We find evidence that such women may instead prefer full-time self-employment.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between family responsibilities and family support, on the one hand, and decisions by men and women concerning owning a business, as well as how many hours they work in that business.

The authors used data collected by the US Current Population Survey between 1989 and 2011 and had a starting sample of 1,258,430 individuals, and a final sample of 27,147.

The authors found that both women and men are more inclined to own a business when they are married, have children or receive financial support from their spouse. They also found widespread gender differences in these analyses. The influence of family-related issues on owning a business is stronger for women than for men.

The findings indicate that male business owners work longer hours if they have young children. In contrast, female business owners reduce their work hours if they are married, have young children and receive support from their spouse. Implications are discussed.

Past research on self-employment and health yielded conflicting findings. Integrating predictions from the Stressor-Strain Outcome model, research on challenge stressors and allostatic load, we predict that physical and mental health are affected by self-employment in distinct ways which play out over different time horizons. We also test whether the health impacts of self-employment are due to enhanced stress (work-related strain) and differ for man and women.

We apply non-parametric propensity score matching in combination with a difference-in-difference approach and longitudinal cohort data to examine self-selection and the causal relationship between self-employment and health. We focus on those that transit into self-employment from paid employment (opportunity self-employment) and analyze strain and health over four years relative to individuals in paid employment.

Those with poorer mental health are more likely to self-select into self-employment. After entering self-employment, individuals experience a short-term uplift in mental health due to lower work-related strain, especially for self-employed men. In the longer-term (four years) the mental health of the self-employed drops back to pre-self-employment levels. We find no effect of self-employment on physical health.

Our research helps to understand the nonpecuniary benefits of self-employment and suggests that we should not advocate self-employment as a “healthy” career.

This article advances research on self-employment and health. Grounded in stress theories it offers new insights relating to self-selection, the temporality of effects, the mediating role of work-related strain, and gender that collectively help to explain why past research yielded conflicting findings.

Self-employment is presented as enabling people to better balance their work and family roles but research on its effectiveness is equivocal. We collected survey data from 280 self- and organizationally-employed certified public accountants and conducted a multivariate analysis comparing positive spillover and conflict between the two groups.The self-employed reported less work-to-family conflict with no differences with respect to family-to-work conflict or positive spillovers. However, there were different patterns between male and female subsamples: self-employed males experienced less conflict and more positive spillover than male employees, whereas self-employed females had less of one form of conflict but more of the other.