Women’s self-employment in Europe : What factors affects women’s self-employment in five regions in Europe?

Abstract

This study aims to analyse women’s self-employment in five regions of Europe, namely Northern Europe, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, North-West Europe and Western Europe in two years, 2002 and 2016. To assess the factors affecting women’s self-employment in Europe we base our analysis on push and pull theory and as far as the quantitative part is concerned we estimate a probit model. Our research questions are the following: What socio-economic factors influence women to enter self-employment in the five regions of Europe? How are these factors related to the push and pull theory? Is there a trend of convergence over time in the five European regions studied? The main findings are that being women decreases the probability to become self-employed in the five European regions, except in the Northern part of Europe. The result suggests that women more often than men are pushed into self-employment as they have to balance work with family. Being young (18-35) also decreases the probability of being self-employed compared to middle age individual (36-50) in the year 2002 and 2016. Individuals with low and medium-skill level have a lower probability of being self-employed in comparison to the individual with high skill. Regarding the research questions, this study found that variable age (18-36), age (51-65), married, children, medium education, high education, low skill and high skill are factors that influence women in their decision to become self-employed. Observing the change over time of self-employment, we found that the probability increases being selfemployed in Southern Europe whereas it decreases in Northern Europe