Abstract

This article analyses various aspects of women’s experiences in overcoming gender stereotypes that they encounter in family businesses. Historically, entrepreneurship was regarded as a male domain in the literature and entrepreneurs have traditionally been described with typical and stereotypical masculine features. When woman engages in economic activities, she must face the potential incoherence of the imagined and the actual image, conflicts and contradictions. Recently, there is more and more research and the field is evolving, both with regard to women founders of enterprises and women participated in the succession process in family firms, applying the comparative approach and assuming women as male rules’ victims. A different approach over recent times has been proposed. The experience of each women in the field of family entrepreneurship is very different from each other and only taking into account this diversity will provide general understanding of female entrepreneurship.Thus, the aim of this article is to take a voice in the contemporary debate on gender and entrepreneurship, by examining the strategies adopted by women to deal with gender stereotypes encountered while building an entrepreneurial identity in family business.

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