Two phenomena are described in this chapter. The inclusion of women in executive and administrative positions is, on the one hand, a crucial problem in diversity management. On the other side, there are more and more successful female business owners. Therefore, the main research issue guiding this work is whether female entrepreneurs' success stories might encourage the hiring of more female managers in organizations. The authors apply a qualitative technique based on several case studies that have been used in prior research on entrepreneurs. Five case studies of successful female entrepreneurs were chosen in order to create study findings with management and theoretical implications.
TopIntroduction
Women currently make up over half of the workforce, but their representation in decision-making and managerial roles remains limited. This is referred to in economic literature as the “glass ceiling” (Powell, 1999; Cotter et al., 2001; Adams, 2012). The metaphor alludes to all the hurdles created by economic, societal, and cultural issues, as well as prejudice, that prohibit women from advancing in their careers. To overcome the glass ceiling, numerous European nations have passed legislation requiring quotas for the number of women on corporate boards. Some studies on diversity management focused on the gender issue, demonstrating how diversity management is a priority for companies, but how it is often insufficient if not accompanied by correct communication of what employees' perceptions of diversity management are, embracing a holistic perspective (Martins & Parsons, 2007), where entrepreneurial identity cannot be separated from social contexts such as macro-cultural, institutional, national, and international (Karatas, 2017). At the same time, researchers emphasize the need to see unique subjects as distinct identities (Gagnon et al., 2021).
In Italy, only 28% of managers are female. In the third quarter of 2020, Italy was fifth last in the ranking of Member States by percentage of female managers. Even at European level, female managers remain a minority, with only 3.3 million women against 6.2 million men, even though women represent almost half of all employed people in the EU (46%). Indeed, in Europe 36% of managers, 27% of board members, and 17% of senior executives are women (Eurostat, 2021).
In this chapter, two phenomena are discussed. On the one hand, a major issue in diversity management is the inclusion of women in executive and managerial jobs (Barak et al. 2015; Ozturk & Tatli, 2016; Francis et al. 2021). On the other hand, the number of successful female entrepreneurs is increasing (Reavley et al., 2008; Quader, 2012). So, the research question driving this work is: can the examples of female entrepreneurs influence the inclusion of a greater number of female managers in organisations? The authors adopt a qualitative methodology based on multiple case studies (Kantur & İşeri‐Say, 2013; Yin, 2009; Omar, 2015) used in other studies on entrepreneurship. Five successful female entrepreneurship case studies were chosen to produce research findings that could be used to derive managerial and theoretical implications.
Figure 1. (Eurostat, 2020)