Women entrepreneurs'financing revisited: taking stock and looking forward

摘要

It is more than 10 years since the special issue on women and the financing of their entrepreneurial ventures (Leitch and Hill 2006) was published in this journal. At that time, the editors drew on papers presented atthe Diana International Research Symposium, held in Stockholm, to provide an overview of extant research into the financing of women-owned/led ventures. Five discrete categories of research were identified: characteristics and behaviours of women business owners; characteristics of their ventures; financial strategies adopted by women business owners, the relationships between those seeking finance (demand side) and those in a position to provide it (supply side) and, perhaps most notably, the impact of gender on women's ability to rise finance for their ventures. The papers published in that special issue helped to shape a research agenda for scholars to pursue, highlighting the need for research designs to capture the heterogeneity of women business-owners and their ventures; include comparative investigations that give "voice" to women's experiences of seeking and securing finance; adopt a longitudinal perspective and contribute to theory building.