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This study aims to examine why women transition from wage work to self-employed entrepreneurship, the seemingly insecure and unruly economic sector compared with the stable iron rice bowl and the fancy spring rice jobs.

Based on in-depth interviews in Zhejiang, the entrepreneurial hotbed in coastal China, this study examines the experiences of self-employed female entrepreneurs who used to work in the iron rice bowl and the spring rice jobs and explores their nonconventional career transition and its gendered implications.

This study finds that these women quit their previous jobs to escape from gendered suppression in wage work where their femininity was stereotyped, devalued or disciplined. By working for themselves, these women embrace a rubber rice bowl that allows them to improvise different forms of femininity that are better rewarded and recognized.

The study contributes to studies on gender and work by framing femininity as a fluid rather than a fixed set of qualities and fills the research gap by illustrating women’s agency in reacting to gender expectations in certain workplaces. The study develops a new concept of rubber rice bowl to describe how entrepreneurship, a seemingly women-unfriendly sphere, attracts women by allowing them to comply with, resist, or improvise normative gender expectations.

In recent years, the topic of women's entrepreneurship has gained increasing attention from researchers and policymakers. Its role in economic growth and development has been widely recognized in several studies. However, the relationship between gender in entrepreneurship and innovation is an underexplored aspect in particular at a country-level perspective. This paper aims to answer the following question: Does female entrepreneurship impact innovation at a national level?

Using a panel dataset of 35 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries over the period 2002–2019, the authors carried out a comprehensive econometric analysis, based on the fixed-effect model, the random-effect model and the feasible generalized least squares estimator, as well as a battery of tests to prevent problems of multicollinearity, heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation of the error terms. In doing so, the authors found consistent and robust results on the linear and nonlinear relationship between women's entrepreneurship and innovation, using selected country indicators from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) consortium, the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) and the World Development Indicators (WDI), including female self-employment, female nascent entrepreneurship and R&D investment and controlling for the same relationships in the case of men's entrepreneurship.

This study shows that the level of R&D investment, which according to the literature can be considered as a proxy of innovation, is higher when the level of women's entrepreneurship is low. However, exploring more in depth this relationship and the relationship between male entrepreneurship and innovation, the authors found two important and new results. The first one involves the different impact on R&D investment of female self-employment and female nascent entrepreneurship. In particular, female self-employment appears to have a linear negative impact on the R&D, while the impact of female nascent entrepreneurship is statistically nonsignificant. The second one affects the nonlinearity of the negative effect, suggesting that very different challenges are possible at different levels of women's entrepreneurship. In addition, analyzing the role of human capital in the relationship between R&D investment and women entrepreneurship, it emerges that higher education (as the main component of human capital) makes early-stage women's entrepreneurship more technologically consuming, which promotes R&D investment. A higher level of education lessens the significance of the negative relationship between the simplest type of women entrepreneurship (female self-employment) and R&D investment.

The originality of the study is that it provides new evidence regarding the link between women's entrepreneurship and innovation at the macro level, with a specific focus on self-employed women entrepreneurs and early-stage women entrepreneurship. In this sense, to the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is among the few showing a nonlinear relationship between women's entrepreneurship and country-level innovation and a negative impact only in the case of female self-employment. Moreover, this study has relevant implications from a policymaking perspective, in terms of promoting more productive women's entrepreneurship.

This study sheds light on the impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on self-employed women in Mauritius and delves into their coping strategies amid unprecedented circumstances.

The study employs a comprehensive methodology encompassing both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Qualitative analysis is conducted via interviews with self-employed women in Mauritius, capturing their experience with COVID-19. Quantitative analysis uses survey data from 732 firms to investigate factors affecting online sales, a major survival strategy adopted by businesses.

The study finds a notable trend wherein many interviewed women have transitioned their businesses online – a pivot that stands out as a common response within the sample. The quantitative analysis indicates the significance of a strong online presence, particularly on social media and web-based platforms designed for the sale of goods and services. These factors correlate with higher online sales, potentially enhancing resilience during pandemic-induced lockdown periods.

This study stands out for its originality, representing the first study investigating how women entrepreneurs in Mauritius have navigated the challenges posed by the COVID-19 crisis.

This explorative study aims to investigate work precariousness (WP) among EU27-based economically dependent solo self-employed, i.e. those with no employees and usually relying on just one client.

Univariate and multivariate analyses of European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) (2015) and Eurostat data.

The analyses yielded Disempowerment, intended as lack of job autonomy and money-induced Vulnerability as the dimensions of WP. Disempowerment was found positively influenced by workers' threat of losing the job and negatively by the enjoyment from being their own boss. Vulnerability was negatively influenced by workers' age, perceived easiness to find new customers, household's financial well-being as well as the country's employment rate.

The study represents pioneer exploration of the phenomenon's dimensionality and main determinants.

This study aims to examine the association between apprenticeship training and self-employment and how gender moderates the association.

Secondary data from the World Bank’s Skills Towards Employment and Productivity (STEP) survey on Ghana were analysed using a binary choice (logit regression) model. The STEP survey drew its nationally representative sample from the working-age population (15–64 years) in urban areas.

After controlling for several factors identified in the literature as determinants of self-employment, the results indicate that completing apprenticeship training increases the likelihood of being self-employed. However, women who have completed apprenticeship training are more likely to be self-employed than men.

By examining the moderating effect of gender on the association between apprenticeship training and self-employment, this study has offered new evidence that policymakers can use to promote self-employment, especially among women, to reduce the entrepreneurial gap between men and women.

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.

Over the years, at the international level, the social construction assumption according to which women would be less innovative than men and, consequently, also less prone to be involved in innovative fields, since their educational path decisions to career path decisions, has long prevailed. This has resulted in a widespread lack of representation of women in more innovative sectors, in comparison to their male counterparts. In recent years then, if the pandemic has had an impact, at least for some specific socio-economic contexts, especially on those that can be typically considered as ‘necessity entrepreneurs’, it has to be said that it has been able also to generate some virtuous dynamics crosswise related to innovative issues. In particular, this chapter aims to go in depth into these issues from the perspective of innovative women entrepreneurs in the attempt to answer to the following questions: how does the socio-economic environment affect innovative women entrepreneurs? And, what are the unique experiences, achievements and contributions of innovative women entrepreneurs in Italy? In order to answer to these specific research questions, an analysis based on direct interviews with a sample of Italian innovative women entrepreneurs has been conducted.

Purpose: This chapter investigates the current skill gap in small-scale industries, the need for skill development and digital training in micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSME), and reviews policies for skill development and solutions.

Need for the Study: While the legislature and organisations have initiated various considerations for the successful implementation of the Skill Development System in the country’s MSMEs, there are significant challenges that must be addressed quickly to fill the skill gap in workers in this digital era.

Research Methodology: Secondary data has been used for the chapter review. Analysis has been done based on review data from women handloom and handicraft workers in the micro or craft industry who received a Star rating from the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) partners in Lucknow. For data collection, a questionnaire based on random sampling was used. The data were analysed using a rudimentary weighted average and a percentage technique.

Findings: The studies provide answers to some fundamental problems: are small industry employees indeed mobilised to be skilled outside the official schooling system? Is the training delivery mechanism adequate to prepare pupils for employment? Would industries be willing to reduce minimum qualification criteria to foster skill development?

Practical Implication: Non-technical aptitudes digital and soft skills for workers in this sector should be emphasised in MSMEs, and significant reforms in MSME sectors and capacity-building education and training programmes should be implemented in the Indian industry to generate small and medium enterprises production and employment.

The COVID-19 pandemic, in addition to causing a very serious economic crisis, has slowed the path taken toward achieving gender equality. For example, the closure of third sector activities by governments has meant the loss of many jobs in this female-dominated sector (ILO, 2020; UN, 2020) slowing and hindering the professional careers of many women (Carli, 2020).

The objective of this work is to identify gender differences by analyzing the levels of sustainable development achieved by Italian regions. The Italian case in fact is very peculiar due to its historical territorial gap between the regions of the North (among the most developed) and those of the Center-South, which still show high gender inequalities. A Gender Sustainable Development Index (GSDI) will be constructed through the use of 50 indicators from the Benessere Equo e Sostenibile survey of Istat. The technique used is the stacking method (Landi, Ivaldi, & Testi, 2017; Norman, 2010), which was chosen for its high replicability of results. The results show that only 40% of Italian regions have higher levels of female sustainable development than male sustainable development. Moreover, the regions with the worst levels of both female and male sustainable development are located in the Center-South of the country, confirming the strong territorial gap present within the Italian Peninsula.

The social inclusion of immigrants has been a central public policy issue in European countries, and entrepreneurship is often promoted as a form of integration. Female immigrants face double discrimination of gender and ethnicity while becoming entrepreneurs. The aim of the paper is to investigate the female empowerment in the host country as a predictor of immigrant women engagement in entrepreneurship.

Based on panel data for European Union countries for years 2006–2021, female immigrant entrepreneurship was modelled by the impact of variables showing the empowerment of women in host countries. Data availability was the determinant regarding the inclusion of 22 countries: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden were all in the research sample.

Although immigrant entrepreneurship is highly context-oriented and locale-specific (as in the physical setting for relationships among people), some universal patterns for a group of countries are found. A stronger political and managerial position of power for the women in host countries encourages female immigrant entrepreneurship, while the gender pay gap is statistically insignificant.

The originality of the paper is due to the multi-country level and female-focused research perspectives in immigrant entrepreneurship. The study refers to the intersectionality of gender and ethnicity, arguing that the empowerment of women in host countries affects female immigrant entrepreneurship at the macro-level.