ABSTRACT
Women comprise 25 per cent of the self-employed population in Great Britain, a proportion which has been steadily increasing since the early 1980s. Clearly, not all self-employed people can be described as small business owners or 'entrepreneurs'. For example, around two-thirds of the self-employed population do not employ any other people besides themselves (Creigh et al. 1986). However, it would seem reasonable to assume that the level of small business ownership amongst women is increasing at a similar rate to the growth of self-employment. An analysis of General Household Survey (GHS) data by Curran and Burrows (1988a) suggests that around 25 per cent of small business owners in 1984 were women. Despite the obvious numerical importance in the small business sector of firms which are owned and controlled by women, and despite the growing interest in the role of women in the labour market more generally (see for example Hunt 1988), there has been surprisingly little research into women and selfemployment/small business ownership. There has been even less work which has compared the characteristics and background of male and female business owners and/ or the characteristics and performance of their businesses. This chapter presents some results from a survey of 298 small businesses conducted in 1985 and a follow-up survey of 184 of these firms which were still in existence at the end of 1988. Although the survey was not designed specifically to facilitate a comparison between male-and female-owned businesses, sixty-seven of the firms which participated in the 1985 survey were owned and managed by women, of whom fifty-one had originally founded their firms. This provides a reasonable basis upon which to undertake comparisons between male-and female-run businesses.
