The numbers of women entrepreneurs are growing on a worldwide basis (Minniti et al., 2004). Alongside this growth, a similar development has been the significantly increasing research interest in women entrepreneurs. There has been much attention on researching women entrepreneurs as a group and another body of research which makes gender comparisons. These gender comparative studies have been criticised as they may merely place women as secondary to men (Ahl, 2006). From my perspective, having spent many years of my PhD in the depths of the literature on this gender comparative research, this book takes a welcome new approach and looks at women entrepreneurs as an important group in their own right without requiring gender comparisons to be worthy of interest.
Often we speak of women entrepreneurs as being a homogenous group, having similar motivations, types of businesses, problems and backgrounds. Andrea E. Smith‐Hunter's book reminds us of the heterogeneity of women entrepreneurs by comparing white and minority entrepreneurs (and differences between minority groups in some cases). This book is the product of a study of 263 women entrepreneurs in the USA. The main purpose of the book, as the author states, is that it “provides a solid foundation for the study of women entrepreneurs, with its emphasis on three critical areas, namely human capital, network structure and financial capital and its groundbreaking focus on analyzing these dimensions across racial lines” (p. 216).
One of the strengths of this book lies in the admirable literature reviews throughout the volume. The author reviews vast amounts of literature on women entrepreneurs, and more specifically, studies involving women minority entrepreneurs. The nature of this task should not be underestimated, given the ever‐expanding academic field of entrepreneurship and women's entrepreneurship in particular. The first two chapters review the extant literature on women entrepreneurs in some detail, illustrating the reasons for the rise in women entrepreneurs over the past few decades. The study is based on women in the USA, but Smith‐Hunter clearly details the situation for women entrepreneurs in other countries as well. However, I question the positioning of these chapters, as they seem to appear too late in the book (Chapters 8 and 9) and may have been more valuable as context chapters before the results chapters. Additionally, the recent global entrepreneurship monitor study on women entrepreneurs worldwide would have been a useful addition to this chapter (Minniti et al., 2004).
The book contains four results chapters. First, an overview of the results describes information about the sample such as the types of business the women started, business size and location, and other personal demographics such as marital status. The women in this sample were primarily “accidental” rather than “intentional” entrepreneurs and fell into entrepreneurship, rather than having had existing aspirations to become entrepreneurs. Results showed minority women were more likely than white women to start a business with a business partner and this was due to resource constraints. Differences between the two groups and the type of business were also found (white women favour corporations while minority women favour partnerships or sole proprietorships). In line with other research, Smith‐Hunter found her sample of minority women had smaller ventures compared to the white women. This was again due to lack of resources to expand and also wanting to keep their business more manageable.
The three remaining results chapters focus on the issues of human capital, financial capital and network structures. Chapter 5 describes in detail human capital factors such as education, work experience and other entrepreneurial experience and their influence on entrepreneurship. Compared with minority women, white women had higher education levels and had greater experience in supervising staff, and accounting and marketing. These women had been working in paid employment for some time (approximately ten years) before starting a business. White women were also in a better position regarding previous self‐employment experience and exposure to others in business (such as family members).
Chapter 6 describes the network structure of the women in the sample. An entrepreneur's network has been found to be a key factor in entrepreneurial success. Following on from some of the issues discussed previously, this chapter investigates issues such as assistance received from family and friends and memberships in organizations. The women in the sample were found to use their networks to their advantage in order to help their business survive. They looked to friends and family (more so for minority women) to be their employees, possibly because they were unable to pay for employees outside the family. The support of friends and family was also of paramount importance when accessing finance, making this less difficult than for women with lower levels of support.
The issues around financial capital are where many quite vast differences between white and minority women entrepreneurs were found. Access to finance is often described as one of the biggest hurdles women entrepreneurs face. Clear differences between the white and minority women were found, with minority women more likely to experience difficulty in obtaining finance at the start‐up stage of their business. Interestingly, the minority women were more likely to use their own savings and credit cards to fund their start‐up, while white women, who also relied heavily on their personal savings, had borrowed from banks, friends and family and partners as well. The accessing of bank loans has been a facet of many studies of women entrepreneurs, and this study found that within the sample, white and minority women had quite different experiences. White women had fewer problems accessing finance compared to minority women. Almost 60 per cent of minority women said gaining finance was “very difficult” while only 35 per cent of white women mentioned this problem. Another significant contrast was seen in the amount of start‐up capital the two groups started with. White women on average spent $122,961 while minority women spent only $25,204 at start‐up. Similarly, average net profits for the minority women's businesses were only half as much as white women's businesses. Although financial success is often used as a measure of success for entrepreneurs, some entrepreneurs (particularly women) have non‐financial measures of success but none of these emerged in this book.
While Smith‐Hunter's book provides a highly detailed account of her study, its relation to prior literature is not without weaknesses in my view, particularly from a methodological point of view. For example, the nature of the follow‐up interviews, which appear to have been an afterthought, are not well documented. First, it is only in the preface (not the method chapter) where we learn how many women were interviewed (25 minority and 26 white women), and we do not know why these women were chosen specifically or how long they were interviewed for. The book claims to be an example of “interweaving” of qualitative and quantitative data. This is a difficult task in any circumstance, and given that the author has conducted a significant number of interviews, there was much potential for highlighting the rich data that was gained from these women. However, the voices of these interviewees are not strongly portrayed here, and as the interweaving of qualitative and quantitative results is one of the selling points of the book, this is somewhat disappointing. For a multiple method study, the presentation of results is heavily weighted towards the quantitative portion of the study and very little emphasis is placed on the qualitative data. Each results chapter provides on average only three quotes from participants, and in some cases these are not well interwoven with the quantitative results. Other weaknesses lie less in the content of the book and more in its presentation style. For example, there are significant numbers of tables per chapter, the figures in which are also discussed directly below each table, making for repetition and a lengthier book than appears necessary. However, I also would have liked to see the questionnaire in full and the interview questions in an appendix.
The primary target audience of the book is, the author suggests, women entrepreneurs, followed by students, professors, institutions and organisations interested in assisting the field of women entrepreneurs. I read this book as an academic, and would argue that it is of most use for academics (students and professors), and provides an up‐to‐date and well‐researched portrait of women entrepreneurs in the USA and beyond. This would appear to be the primary target market as its academic format with a heavy focus on statistics and academic literature does not appear to be conducive to women entrepreneurs learning from it easily. However, there is no doubt this book fills an important gap in the literature, not only because there is a growing population of women entrepreneurs, but also because of the growing number of minority women entering entrepreneurship.
