Work and Employment in Small Businesses: Perpetuating and Challenging Gender Traditions

Abstract

More and more women and men are becoming dependent on some form of small business activity for all or part of their livelihoods but there is little research offering insight into gender and working practices in small businesses. In this article we assess some theoretical approaches and discuss these against an empirical investigation of micro-firms run by women, men and mixed sex partnerships. In the 'entrepreneurship' literature, with its emphasis on the individual business owner, we find little guidance. We argue that in the 'modern' microbusiness, family and work are brought into proximity as in the 'in between' organizational form described by Weber. The celebrated 'flexibility' of small firms often involves the reproduction within modernity of seemingly pre-modern practices in household organization and gender divisions of labour. This is true in the Britain of the 1990s in a growing business sector normally associated neither with tradition nor with the family. Tradition, however, is never automatic or uncontested in a 'post-traditional society'. A minority of women and men in micro-enterprises actively resist traditional solutions and even traditional imagery of male and female behaviour. For this small group alone new economic conditions seem to bring new freedom.

Women’s Experiences of Micro-Enterprise: Contexts and Meanings

“…The study supports Arai (1997), Karides (2005) and Baines and Wheelock (2000) conclusions that only a minority of women in micro enterprise defies established solutions and confronts hegemonic gendered structures. The study calls to incorporate social and economic justice among the primary goals of micro-enterprise.…”

“…Research has given questionable support to the idea that promoting women's micro-enterprise can make an important contribution toward changing the gendered nature of economic exclusion of women (Beaucage et al 2004;Conway and Sheridan 2005;Ehlers and Main 1998;Isserles 2003). Baines and Wheelock (2000) suggest that only a minority of women in micro enterprise resist traditional solutions and challenge the imagery of male and female gendered behaviors. Other studies conclude that women have been pushed into self-employment by structural changes in the labor market which have eroded the availability of once secure jobs in the public and private sector (MacDonald 1996;Hughes 2003).…”

The CEO gender pay gap in the tourism industry—Evidence from Norway

“…Bird and Sapp (2004) hold that gender influences human capital investments, social networks, and managers' business goals. Higher collective social status and common gender practices encourage men to develop human capital and social networks that are more efficient for business success (Baines & Wheelock, 2000;Fischer, Reuber, & Dyke, 1993;Kalleberg & Leicht, 1991). Thus, human capital investments and social networks may not produce the same benefits for male and female managers.…”

Ethnic entrepreneurs and online home-based businesses: an exploratory study

“…Europen Union 2016). Micro businesses are theorised as flexible, creative and able to adapt quickly to changing context and opportunities (Baines and Wheelock, 2000;Pretorius et al, 2005). They are also theorised as 'staying close to the customer' , which has been characterised as entrepreneurial marketing (Morrish et al, 2010;Anwar and Daniel, 2016a).…”