Chapter 9: Leading Women Entrepreneurs of Thailand

The Thai legend above illustrates the important yet veiled role of women in Thai society. Women comprise 46% of the labor force; 26% of senior officials, legislators, and managers (UNDP, 2006); and nearly 50% of entrepreneurs (Minniti, Allen, & Langowitz, 2006) in Thailand. Most of these women are running small companies, but a handful head large, growth-oriented entrepreneurial firms. In this chapter, we profile four leading Thai women who have been recognized with the highly prestigious “Leading Women Entrepreneurs of the World” (LWEW) award: Kobkarn Wattanavranangkul, Khungying Pornthip Narongdej, Supapan Pichaironarongsongkram, and Supaluck Umpujh.

Despite the awareness of female entrepreneurs’ role in economic development (OECD, 2000), there has been limited academic attention (Baker, Aldrich, & Liou, 1997; de Bruin, Brush, & Welter, 2006), particularly to highly successful “gazelle” entrepreneurs. Extant female entrepreneurship research has explored a range of topics including gender differences (e.g., Birley, 1989; Hisrish & Brush, 1984), performance (e.g., Fasci & Valdez, 1998), and financing (e.g., O’Gorman & Terjesen, 2005). Researchers have called for studies of entrepreneurship that take into account the role of culture (Hayton, George, & Zahra, 2002) and are of a qualitative nature (Davidsson, 2004; Gartner & Birley, 2002).