Women and Entrepreneurship: Contemporary Classics

Women's entrepreneurship makes a significant contribution to economic and social development and is a major force for innovation and job creation. However, it is only relatively recently that awareness emerged that women's entrepreneurship is a unique subset of entrepreneurship, deserving of dedicated focus in scholarly research. Given this late start there is only a relatively small and fragmented base of research on women's entrepreneurship. This book is invaluable since it provides a cohesive overview of these different theoretical perspectives, empirical findings and methodologies that address women's entrepreneurship.

As the title indicates, the book includes a collection of contributions that have been of significance in shaping the field of women's entrepreneurship. It is a volume in the Elgar reference collection – “The international library of entrepreneurship” series.

The five editors are themselves leading scholars of women's entrepreneurship and therefore eminently positioned to make an informed choice of the leading contributions to have shaped the field. However, their choice is not merely informed by their own intimate knowledge of the field. Their selection of the 30 articles followed a rigorous process which commenced with building a database of approximately 370 articles.

At the first stage, they drew up a bibliography of 300 articles from the top entrepreneurship journals and other additional reputable sources. This resulted in an annotated bibliography which was published in 2003 by Entrepreneurship and Small Business Research Institute (ESBRI, Sweden). Also in 2003, the Diana Project team (comprising the editors who initiated the project in 1999 to further study the phenomenon of women entrepreneurs and the growth of their businesses in the USA), partnered with ESBRI to develop a shared research agenda together with an international community of scholars on women's entrepreneurship. The Diana International Project was born. This reviewer is part of that research collaborative.

The annotated bibliography review was further updated to include new articles published between 2002 and mid‐2004. Each of the five members of the Diana Project then reviewed all the articles and selected the set that they considered to be important and influential. A preliminary list of approximately 50 articles was the outcome of this exercise. Then an iterative review of this list by each of the “Dianas” followed. It is clear, therefore, that the editors were extremely thorough in their assessment of contributions which would be deemed “classic” and appropriate for the volume.

The book commences with a lucid editors' introduction. It neatly explains the organization of the contributions into two sets of papers. The first set comprises the theoretical approaches to female entrepreneurship and a framework adapted from the Diana Project publications is presented to organize the second set of contributions. This useful framework captures the essential dimensions that emerged from the in‐depth review of the literature, i.e. the first stage review of over 300 articles. It includes both the demand‐ and supply‐sides of entrepreneurial domain. Sex is delineated as the defining variable that links with the other aspects explored – personal cognitions, human capital, social capital and financial capital, as well as the strategic choice of entrepreneurs. Since, environmental effects can be crucial as either facilitators or barriers to enterprise start‐up and growth, they are also integrated into the framework. Importantly they can impact on the various factors of the entrepreneurial domain and on resource acquisition. The latter is portrayed as the link between providers in the resource domain, and the entrepreneurial domain.

Gender also plays a role in business performance. Though performance is not an explicit concept in the framework, the volume includes articles focusing on business performance. Inclusion of these articles enables the exploration of entrepreneurial outcomes, in addition to entrepreneurial process and inputs.

Papers are grouped to cover each of the core aspects of the framework as well as performance. Thus, a variety of classic contributions are organised along six themes: Part II – Human capital and cognition; Part III – Social capital; Part IV – Financial capital; Part V – Strategic choice; Part VI – Performance and Part VII – Environmental. Together they comprise the second set of papers, while the first set of papers sets the scene with the foremost contributions to theory. The editors provide a handy, concise overview of each of the 30 articles that make up the volume.

Appropriately, the theory segment commences with a paper by early pioneer of women's entrepreneurship research, Sue Birley. This 1989 article gave a firm boost to the slowly building momentum on the value of studying the similarities and differences between women and men and their businesses. From the 1980s onwards, a focus on understanding entrepreneurship as a gendered activity had become a clearly discernible theme. Within the literature there is growing awareness that women entrepreneurs are a distinct group and that it is important for them to be studied as a population, separate from men and their ventures. After the Birley article, the other five contributions that follow, provide further theoretical insights into women‐owned businesses and extended the research agenda on sex, gender and entrepreneurship.

Research and interest in issues of women's entrepreneurship has come a long way since the earliest of the classic contributions included in this volume (in Part VII – Environmental). This 1976 article entitled “Entrepreneurship: a new female frontier” by Eleanor Brantley Schwartz, was a pioneering exposition that drew attention to structural environmental factors that can have different impacts on women and men entrepreneurs, even if individual level variables display few gendered differences.

Despite the increasing interest from academics, the extant body of literature, however, remains small and “the reality is that … women's entrepreneurship research is at the early childhood stage” (de Bruin et al., 2006, p. 590). Encouragingly, this body of literature is steadily growing. In the short time, from mid‐2004 when the review of articles for this volume ended, to the end of 2006 when this review was written, there has been quite a significant amount of new research published.

For instance, there have been several journals publishing special issues on women's entrepreneurship recently. These include: Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice (2 volumes), Venture Capital Journal (2 volumes), Entrepreneurial Behavior and Research, International Journal of Entrepreneurship & Innovation, International Journal of Small Business, and Female and Rural Entrepreneurship. It will not be long, therefore, before a second edition to cover new insights on women's entrepreneurship will be needed. Until then, this collection should be the first stop for all those starting their research journey in the field as well as a handy companion for those further down the track. It is a valuable reference tool that provides easy access to the key articles on women's entrepreneurship, all effectively organised along the lines of seven dominant strands of research. The volume will certainly be “a launching pad for future scholastic work” (p. xiv).