ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at two examples of business start-up training which have specifically targeted women, both younger women entering the labour market for the first time and older women who are either unemployed or returning to the labour market after raising a family. It is argued that women face a double disadvantage in trying to start up and run their own business. First, women have not traditionally been seen as business owners, and are under-represented in the small business sector. Second, women perform a dual role in that they are almost always responsible for domestic and family concerns whether they are economically active or not (see Epstein this volume). The chapter discusses the training programmes that the authors have developed, which in their style, content and timing set out to meet the special needs of women contemplating self-employment. 1
THE ENTERPRISE CLIMATE
Since the late 1970s, governments have encouraged small business start-ups and the promotion of self-employment as an 'employment' option. This has been done both directly through the provision of finance, advice services, and training schemes and indirectly through changes in Government policy and legislation affecting the small business sector. As early as 1983 the Department of Industry could state that in the previous four years no less than ninety-eight measures had been specifically introduced to benefit small firms (Curran 1986). Since then many more initiatives have emerged, providing a complex network of support to small and medium enterprises (SME sector) (see, for example, Government White Paper 1986; Employment Gazette 1988a and Department of Employment 1989). What has been the rationale behind this promotion of small enterprise development? The reasons given for this advocacy have been wide-ranging -from
wealth creation and stimulating economic growth, to encouraging the 'self-made person' ethic. Increasingly throughout the 1980s, however, the promotion of self-employment and business start-up was linked to unemployment and seen as an important tool for reducing the large numbers of unemployed found throughout the UK.
