ABSTRACT
This research analyses the entrepreneurial potential of women ex-offenders based on a survey conducted among 473 prisoners, 352 men and 121 women, who were subjected to the process of social reinsertion at the correctional institutions of northwestern Spain. The results show some gender differences. Although women prisoners have a social support network less extensive than that for men, they demonstrate similar levels of entrepreneurial potential. In this paper, it is proposed that employment counselling in penal institutions should be addressed to guiding prisoners through the entrepreneurship process whilst focusing the training they receive on the real-life contexts that women inmates face when they complete the terms of their sentence. The novelty of this study lies in the context used, very difficult to access, as well as its organizational impact on penal institutions, which are often neglected by scholars.
