Difference between men and women with regard to business performance

There seem to be a difference between men and women with regard to business performance.

Though Mazzarol etal(1999) found that females were generally less likely to be the founders of new businesses than males.

Some empirical studies have shown the size of businesses owned by women is significant smaller than those owned by their counterparts. Also some studies have shown that women-owned businesses grow less quickly than those owned by men (Cooper et al., 1994: Fischer et al., 1993; Singh et al., 2001; Mead and Liedholm, 1998).

In relation to growth aspirations, Kolvereid (1992) analyzed growth aspirations of entrepreneurs in Norway; he found that male entrepreneurs were more likely to state positive growth intentions than female entrepreneurs, but the difference was not statistically significant. Kolvereid said that the statistical significance of the results may be country specific, since Norway is an egalitarian country where the male-female differences are not particularly strong.

Cliff (1998) examined growth aspirations between male and female entrepreneurs. The author found that male and female entrepreneurs seem equally likely to desire business growth. The qualitative findings suggest that female entrepreneurs are more likely to establish maximum business size thresholds beyond which they would prefer not to expand, and that these thresholds are smaller than those set by their male counterpart.