Female and male entrepreneurs in Sweden and the Netherlands : a test of liberal and social feminism

SOM theme D:Demography and Geography After chronicling a brief history of women and work in Sweden and the Netherlands and summarizing previous research in this area, we outline the central premises of liberal and social feminism. We do this by replicating the study of Fischer et al. (1993) that also investigates these two theories. We test four central hypotheses, using data from the INTERSTRATOS project (INTERnationalization of STRAegic Orientation of Small- and medium-sized enterprises). Our comparison of women’s and me’s businesses both in Sweden and the Netherlands finds support for liberal feminist theories (female ntrepreneurs leave fulltime education earlier, own smaller businesse and have fewer years of experience than male entrepreneurs) and finds virtually no support for the social feminist argument (female entrepreneurs have almost the same opinions about doing business as male entrepreneurs) in both countries. We test cultural reasons why entrepreneurs might differ in opinion in two hypotheses which compare attitudinal variations between female business owners in Sweden and the Netherlands. We assume that it is not the sex that makes people differ in world views, but that cult re is an important factor in building attitudes