Gender Differences in Ethnic Entrepreneurship

Abstract

Gender-based differences are the most important topic of discussion in female entrepreneurship studies. While the earliest studies focused on psychological and sociological characteristics of female entrepreneurs, assuming there were only a few differences between males and females, more recent studies have focused on gender-based differences in entrepreneurship from a new perspective, referred to as the “integrated perspective”, which is rooted in psychological and sociological theories. This perspective focuses on sex and gender differences in entrepreneurial characteristics and performance from the perspective of “liberal feminist” and “social feminist” theories, which attemp to explain the basis of the lower status of women in society. The aim of this paper is to investigate gender-based differences in a special field of entrepreneurship the so-called “ethnic entrepreneurship”, and to describe male and female profiles of ethnic entrepreneurs and enterprises. Our findings are based on a comparison of two case study researches; while the first was conducted among three different ethnic groups including Turkish, Indian/Pakistani and Moroccan male entrepreneurs, the second was conducted among Turkish female entrepreneurs in Amsterdam. The results of our comparison show that there are some gender-based differences in ethnic entrepreneurship similar to gender-based differences observed commonly in entrepreneurship. This similarity in trends demonstrates that “gender” as a factor has a higher importance than the “ethnicity” in the characteristics and behavioral attitudes of ethnic entrepreneurs.