Abstract
The challenges of a global pandemic have placed women's business ownership and entrepreneurship at the forefront of much debate. This is an important area to pursue within scholarly arenas because women's involvement in business ownership and entrepreneurship continues to impact women's livelihoods, families, and impacts the local and global economy. There are many studies that explored challenges and barriers to women's entrepreneurship, a more specific and focused finding should be addressed to review implications presented due to COVID-19 pandemic. An examination of how ethnicity, gender, and race plays a role in women entrepreneurship process and the way women entrepreneurs' experiences were shaped during the pre- and post-pandemic era is warranted on a scholarly level.
TopIntroduction
In 2018, University of California archaeologist Randy Haas unearthed the 9,000 – year-old remains of an adult female hunter in the Andes Mountains. The discovery challenged the assumption that gender discrimination is biologically-based due to the differences in physiology and women’s role in childbirth. Gerda (1986), in her book The Creation of Patriarchy, suggests that female subordination arose voluntarily when humans began to settle in groups and control of reproduction resources (women) led to private property ownership and class distinction. Lerner theorizes that females willingly accepted a subordinated role in exchange for male physical protection and privilege during the first periods of civilization.
During the subsequent millennia, women’s status, and rights vis-a-vis that of a male, steadily declined, confined to child-raising and domestic chores with limited legal, social, or economic rights. Despite cultural barriers, females have demonstrated throughout history their capacity to overcome prejudice and discrimination in all forms of social and economic activities:
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Politics. The English Queens Elizabeth I, Katherine the Great, and Victoria were the equal, if not superior, to any male ruler of their times. Modern female political leaders include Golda Meir of Israel, India’s Indira Gandhi, and Germany’s Angela Merkel.
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Science. Caroline Herschel’s work in astronomy in the early 1800s led to an Honorary Membership in the prestigious Royal Society more than a century before women were allowed formally into these societies. Marie Curie won two Nobel Prizes: Physics, 1903 and Radioactivity, 1911. Lise Meitner was a co-discoverer of nuclear fusions and nominated for Nobel Prizes in chemistry and physics 48 times. Fifty-eight women have won the award since 1901.
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Business. Eliza Lucas Pinckney (1722-1793) is considered America’s first female business owner. Pinckney managed three family farms in South Carolina, she pioneered the cultivation of indigo on a commercial scale, second only to rice as South Carolina cash crop. Rebecca Lukens, the country’s first female CEO, took over her deceased husband steel mill in 1925, expanding the business to become an industrial giant acquired by Bethlehem Steel in 1998. Research suggests that close to 30% of businesses in Victorian England were managed by women, including Eliza Tinsley, a widow who grew a hardware manufacturing business to 4000 employees.
There is no field of endeavor where women have not proven to be the equal of men. Nonetheless, cultural mores and traditional structures continue to impose barriers to the full equality of women as opposed to their male counterparts. Women continue to be underrepresented in starting new businesses today, unable to access resources - capital, mentoring, networks – male entrepreneurs typically enjoy in society.
History of Women Entrepreneurship
According to the study the first female-owned business in the USA was detailed in 1739 when Eliza Lucas Pinckney managed her family's estates in South Carolina as a young adult. In the 18th and 19th periods, women managed small businesses acquired from family legacy or establishing their own businesses to improve their income. In many cases, women were attempting to avoid financial hardship or were replacing the income from the demise of a spouse.
At that time, the business enterprise that these women started were not thought of as entrepreneurial enterprises, because most of these women had to focus on their domestic responsibilities. Due to time-honored and substantive barriers to educational and alternative employment opportunities, African American women were traditionally reduced to attaining low-paying jobs mostly in the field of domestic labor predominantly in the Jim Crow era of the South. As a result, African American women of the early 20th century developed entrepreneurial niches as seamstresses, hairdressers, domestic workers and as midwives.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Discrimination: According to Pascoe (2009) AU22: The in-text citation "Pascoe (2009)" is not in the reference list. Please correct the citation, add the reference to the list, or delete the citation. , “Discrimination is the unfair or prejudicial treatment of people and groups based on characteristics such as race, gender, age or sexual orientation.”
Capitalism: According to the Harvard Business School is often defined as an economic system where private actors are allowed to own and control the use of property in accord with their own interests, and where the invisible hand of the pricing mechanism coordinates supply and demand in markets in a way that is automatically in the best interests of society.
Entrepreneurship: Entrepreneurship, according to Onuoha (2007) , “is the practice of starting new organizations or revitalizing mature organizations, particularly new businesses generally in response to identified opportunities.” Schumpeter (1965) defined “entrepreneurs as individuals who exploit market opportunity through technical and/or organizational innovation.”
Ethnicity: As defined by Bhopal (2004) is “a shared culture and way of life, especially as reflected in language, folkways, religious and other institutional forms, material culture such as clothing and food, and cultural products such as music, literature, etc.”