Pappas flickor : entreprenöriella processer i kvinnoföretagandets tillkomst

Abstract: Fewer women than men are business owners and of those who are, the majority are active in traditionally female businesses. My studies have been carried out among women entrepreneurs who have broken the segregation barrier and own businesses in fields that are non-traditional for women. My purpose is to gain understanding and insight into the conditions of these women business owners on the way towards and during entrepreneurship.My studies in two geographic regions were based upon a hermeneutic view of knowledge. They include about fifty personal interviews which were carried out in the form of discussions lasting one to four hours. The studies show that a majority of women business owners grew up in entrepreneurial environments with good conditions at home, where they felt they were valued as much as they would have been had they been boys. Many of the women business owners felt that they were "daddy's girl" during their childhoods, but that does not mean that they did not have strong mothers whom they admired. In one of the regions, a large proportion of the interview subjects had mothers who were business owners themselves.One of the primary focuses of my work was the invisible control of the gender system - the order between women and men as a group - and the connection with general social attitudes towards women and technology. The results indicate that women who break segregation barriers in their entrepreneurship achieve a renegotiation of society's gender system. The empirical material also suggests that women business owners often give higher priority to "social profits" than financial results. Despite a great deal of work and sometimes less financial gain than through ordinary employment, women entrepreneurs believe that owning their own business provides them with a better life situation than their previous alternatives for supporting themselves.