The Factors Behind Female Entrepreneurial Success

"Entrepreneurship is typically framed as a male domain," says Dr Sheree Gregory from Western Sydney University’s School of Business. In a bid to change this, and improve the entrepreneurship ecosystem in western Sydney, she is leading a team exploring factors that may encourage diverse female entrepreneurs, such as access to sponsors, mentorship and investment funding.

"Governments and communities put a lot of effort into thinking of how to attract and retain entrepreneurs and innovators," says Gregory, a human resources and management lecturer. "But they need to pay more attention to attracting and retaining an untapped pool of highly educated women with ideas and energy to create new business."

A 2020 Statista survey of female entrepreneurs put Australia’s proportion of new businesses run by women as low as 8.8% — which falls short of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average of 9.2%, and is well below the 16.6% seen in the United States.

Such low rates of women’s participation in new ventures in Australia, points to the need for targeted initiatives to support and encourage female innovators, argues Gregory, whose research interests include women’s working lives, gender equality and diversity, inclusion and innovation.

She suggests that solutions could be adopted from a number of city, state and other governments around the world that have developed initiatives to support more diversity and inclusion among entrepreneurs, such as support mechanisms at universities, access to quality child care and innovative models of care, and the fostering of inclusive innovative business ecosystems.

Gregory and her team first conducted in-depth interviews with six female entrepreneurs. "We asked them to comment on key issues and challenges in the entrepreneurial ecosystem and the impact on women in Australia," she says.

"These interviews formed a scoping document that generated strong ideas around gender equality networks, career milestones, life events, advocates, sponsors and caring responsibilities," she adds.

The interviews identified a range of constraints, including struggles accessing investment sources. As a result, "most women start businesses in an informal way, with their own funding or through family support," Gregory says.

In some cases, starting a family was the impetus for entrepreneurship, because women felt that they could create a better alternative to the lack of support they experienced as an employee in the corporate environment. Many women report having faced challenges such as metaphorical 'glass ceilings', gender pay gaps and the so-called 'carer or motherhood penalty'.

One interviewee, after she fell pregnant, felt as though her manager no longer recognised her value to the organisation. "My boss saw me as a risk, rather than seeing… my dedication and my ability to… give back to the business," she said. She didn’t want to seek out employment under similar circumstances and decided to build her own practice.

Another factor that emerged from the interviewees was the lack of opportunities for meaningful support networks and mentorship, Gregory adds, with some respondents receiving critical comments from male peers.

One interviewee reported that she was challenged on the business model she had decided upon. "I got a lot of pushback from my male counterparts in the industry," who quizzed her on why she was setting up as a company rather than a sole trader.

The approach women take to structuring their businesses can be influenced by ambitions around how the company might support their family in the future. "Women’s decisions about their business ventures and enterprise and working time are greatly influenced by gendered beliefs and expectations," Gregory says, adding that "gender is an integral part of this study." An intersectional lens is urgently needed, to shine a light on the care economy and entrepreneurial ecosystem in western Sydney.