1st Edition

The Financing of Small Business A Comparative Study of Male and Female Small Business Owners

By Lauren Helena Read Copyright 1998

    A detailed empirical study of how small business owners finance their enterprises, this volume compares the experiences of women with those of men. The author redresses an over-reliance on subjective and anecdotal evidence of discrimination in this area with a controlled study of forty matched pairs of male/female owners and their strategies for raising finances. The research reveals the importance of adopting a theoretical framework in which the role of gender in the financing of small businesses is considered, and the practical implications for female entrepreneurs, banks and policy-makers.

    1 The growth and characteristics of female entrepreneurship 2 The financing of women-owned businesses: an empirical overview and theoretical framework 3 Research into the financing of women-owned businesses: methodological considerations 4 Raising finance: the use of and attitudes towards sources of small business finance 5 The characteristics of the banking relationship 6 The role of networking in the financing of male and female-owned businesses 7 Conclusions, implications and an agenda for future research

    Biography

    Lauren Read studied for her Ph.D. at the University of Southampton. She is currently a senior policy advisor at the Confederation of British Industry, responsible for small firms policy in the SME Unit.