Women's Entrepreneurship: Current State and Legal Regulation

Prospects

Inna V. Ershova

Kutafin Moscow State Law University (MSAL), st. Sadovaya-Kudrinskaya, 9, Moscow, Russia

Keywords: women's entrepreneurship, women's business, COVID-19, legal regulation, sociology, doctrine, self-

employment.

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to determine the role of women's entrepreneurship and the need for its legal

regulation. Methods of analysis, comparative studies, and modeling were used as the main ones. Research

Results. The significance of the female business segment has been demonstrated. A negative impact of

COVID-19 on the development of female entrepreneurship has been shown. A trend for women to acquire

the self-employed status has been identified. It has been established that there are no deep elaborations of the

concept of women's entrepreneurship, its types, features of implementation in the domestic legal doctrine.

Based on the analysis of Russian and foreign studies, problems are identified, strategies and theories for the

development of women's entrepreneurship are presented, and the main mechanism of women's entry into

business is identified. Conclusions. The greatest results in the study of the problems of women's

entrepreneurship have been achieved by representatives of sociology. Legal research is practically non-

existent. It is necessary to develop a Russian legal doctrine, as well as an integral legal mechanism for

regulating women's entrepreneurship. When designing a legal mechanism for supporting women's business,

it is advisable to take into account the foreign experience that has brought results, while preserving the national

characteristics of Russian women's entrepreneurship.

1 INTRODUCTION

The study of the phenomenon of female

entrepreneurship in recent decades has become more

relevant. And there is a reason - women are

increasingly entering a business, which is confirmed

by the official statistics of the Federal Tax Service.

Interesting data were published on the agency's

website

(https://www.nalog.ru/rn77/news/activities_fts/1066

2978/) on March 5, 2021: women entrepreneurs

present 40.2% (1, 33 million) of the total number of

small businesses (3.31 million).

Without worrying about the calculation

methodology, we note that the share of women in

small and medium-sized businesses shows a positive

trend. Thus, the Index of Woman Enterpreneurs

study, undertaken by Mastercard in 2017, showed that

slightly less than 1/3 (32.6%) of businesses in Russia

are owned by women. This result allowed the Russian

Federation to take 4th place (out of 54 countries

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3327-6201

covered in the study), yielding the first place only to

Uganda (34.8%), Botswana (34.6%) and New

Zealand (33.3%).

We can keep providing evidence that clearly

demonstrates the significance of the segment of

female entrepreneurship. However, as the Russian

saying goes, "there is no rose without a thorn". There

are real problems of women's business hidden behind

those numbers.

COVID-19 has had a negative impact on the

development of women's entrepreneurship. Suffice it

to note that the Women Business Index, WBI

(https://womanopora.ru/projects/indeks-

predprinimatelskoy-aktivnosti-zhenshchin/) was 69.4

in 2019. While 43% of women noted an improvement

in society's attitude to doing business; 88% of women

found it difficult to open their own business due to the

lack of financial opportunities (start-up capital). In

2021, the WBI has dropped to 60.1. The rest of the

numbers got worse too: only 33% of women note an

improvement in society's attitude to doing business;

Ershova, I.

Women’s Entrepreneurship: Current State and Legal Regulation Prospects.

DOI: 10.5220/0010661800003224

In Proceedings of the 1st International Scientiﬁc Forum on Jurisprudence (WFLAW 2021), pages 54-58

ISBN: 978-989-758-598-2

 2022 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All r ights reserved

93% of women find it difficult to open their own

business due to the lack of financial opportunities

(start-up capital). At the same time, there is also a

positive trend: 58% of the surveyed women

entrepreneurs received additional education in the last

6 months (in 2019, the same parameter was at 50%).

In our opinion, a part of the unsolved problems in

the considered area of public relations is due to the

lack of proper scientific understanding by legal

scholars of this direction of doing business and weak

gender differentiation of legal regulation of

entrepreneurship. These problems became especially

acute in the context of economic resuscitation in the

post-COVID-19 period.

2 STUDY METHODOLOGY

In the process of research, such methods of scientific

knowledge as analysis, including temporal analysis,

synthesis, deduction, interpretation, systematization,

modeling, as well as comparative and statistical

methods, were used.

3 RESULTS OF THE STUDY

The author of this article made a request for

publications in the electronic scientific e-laibrary on

the topic “women's business, women's

entrepreneurship”. The search provided the following

results: the sampling included 300 sources of various

scientific genres (dissertation research, scientific

articles, monographs, conference proceedings, etc.).

Their analysis allows saying that the greatest interest

in studying the problems of women's

entrepreneurship is shown by representatives of

sociology, less often - of psychology and economics.

Legal research are presented extremely sparsely.

Suffice it to note that there are no deep

developments of the very concept of women's

entrepreneurship, its types, features of

implementation in the domestic legal doctrine. In this

regard, in this study, we describe the term "women's

entrepreneurship" as a business, the owner and/or

manager of which is a woman. Note that similar

definitions can be found in foreign literature (Shastri,

2014).

Without setting ourselves the task of taking an

inventory of all aspects of women's entrepreneurship,

we will present the main directions of scientific

research of this problem.

3.1 Issues of Women's

Entrepreneurship Development

The study of foreign literature allows stating that a

significant place in the works of foreign authors is

devoted to identifying the specifics of women's

entrepreneurship and barriers to its development -

there are reviews of the literature and research results

on this topic. As a vivid illustration, there is the article

“Problems and Prospects of Woman

Entrepreneurship - A Review of Literature” (Garg &

Agarwal, 2017). It is curious that among the main

problems and barriers to the development of women's

entrepreneurship, the authors name and describe the

following: lack of education; social barriers; financial

difficulties; personal barriers (self-doubt and fear of

failure, lack of entrepreneurial ability); market

barriers; lack of skills; operational and other barriers

caused by the abovementioned or a combination

thereof (obsolescence of technology, legal

formalities, lack of raw materials, lack of government

support, burdensome government procedures, lack of

motivational factors, direct and indirect tax issues,

business location, high staff turnover, lack of public

awareness of government programs, etc.). We believe

that these problems do not have a nationality, but

intercountry and cultural differences determine the

arrangement of dominants.

To be fair, we note that such works, which

combine the analysis of empirical data and

bibliographic reviews, are also presented in Russian

scientific literature. Thus, a great contribution to the

development of this problem in the late 90s was made

by sociologist A.E. Chirikova (Chirikova, 1998,

1997). A full review of the works with the

identification of the main areas of research is given in

the work "Objective and Subjective Factors of the

Development of Women's Entrepreneurship in

Russia" (Utkina, 2017). At the same time, the author

rightly notes that the withdrawal of foreign Western

foundations that financed the study of the "gender

field" of domestic entrepreneurship from Russia has

led to the decadence of works on this issue.

3.2 Strategies for the Development of

Women's Entrepreneurship and

Theories of Role Balance

The understanding of the strategies of its conduct has

a great influence on the understanding of the specifics

of women's entrepreneurship. Note that this aspect is

international and is in the field of view of many

researchers.

Women’s Entrepreneurship: Current State and Legal Regulation Prospects

In our opinion, the following classification of

strategies for ensuring the success of women's

business, presented in the literature, which was the

result of women's business study by its authors

(Drozdov, Filatkina & Filatkina, 2017) of Russian

and, mainly, foreign literature, deserves special

attention: Group Production (Shastri, 2014); Business

with Single Women (Ntanjana, Mangwane, 2020),

(Jiao, Koo & Cui 2015); Man in Charge (Ntseane,

2004), (Salmenniemi, Karhunen P. & Kosonen R.

2011); Powerful Partner (Rey-Martí, Tur-Porcar A. &

Mas-Tur A., 2015).

It is obvious that the productivity of women's

entrepreneurial activity is largely due to the attitude

of family members to their business. This is where the

achievement of a balance of roles comes to the fore:

a mother and a housekeeper, on the one hand, and an

entrepreneur, a leader, on the other. The literature

presents the following typification of emerging

behavioral models: "The main earner in the family",

"Equality in the family and business" and "Husband's

helper" (Drozdov, Filatkina & Filatkina, 2017).

It seems that the given “telling” names do not

need additional comments.

Let us name another concept of “work-and-life

balance” - “Role balance”, according to which “role

conflicts lead to an imbalance between private and

professional life, increased feelings of stress and

psychological tension due to unfulfilled role

expectations” (Dimitrova E.K., Tonkikh N.V., 2020).

The imbalance is especially pronounced in women,

which adversely affects the development of business.

In general, foreign (Obaco, Royuela, 2020),

(Knodel, Vu, Jayakody & Huy, 2005) and Russian

scientists pay great attention to the study of the work-

and-life balance problem. Thus, the analysis of the

results of sociological research carried out by the

interviewing method (140 interviews) with a

difference of 10 years, brought A.E. Chirikova to the

conclusion that building a family according to the

egalitarian principle allows a woman to harmonize

family function and leadership positions in business

(Chirikova, 2011). The work of E.K. Dimitrova and

N.V. Tonkikh is also of interest, which shows the

differentiation of attitudes towards “work-and-life

balance” in different groups of the population with

similar social conditions, and also identifies factors

influencing the degree of satisfaction with “work-

and-life balance” (Dimitrova, Tonkikh, 2020). We

point out that the authors' conclusions were

formulated on the basis of the results of a study of the

quality of life conducted by Eurofound in 2016 and

data from 2019 based on the results of a survey of

Russian women-mothers employed in online business

(Tonkikh, Baranova, 2019).

It is clear to us that achieving a balance between

life and work is the key to success for the

development of women's entrepreneurship. Progress

in this direction requires the mutual efforts of various

actors: women, families, employers, the state.

3.3 Entry of Women into Business

Another important area of research, in our opinion, is

the "entry" of women into business.

In particular, an analysis of the results of studies

on the problem of gender characteristics of business

inheritance by Western sociologists (Bika, 2014),

(Kubíček, Machek, 2019) allows us to conclude that

men inherit business more often than women. Based

on the study of the results of 20 in-depth interviews

with representatives of the first and second generation

of business dynasties (10 men and 10 women), Yu.S.

Panfilova formulated the conclusion that men are

more characterized by their own motivation and

ambitions when inheriting a business, while women's

narratives also demonstrate forced models of

succession (Panfilova, 2020).

Having set the goal of classifying the ways

women enter the area of professional business

activity, A.I. Voronkova undertook an analysis of

data from the Forbes ranking for 2014-2017,

reviewed the doctrines of female business elites, and

studied materials posted in the media on this issue.

Among the conclusions drawn by the author based on

the results of the study, let us pay attention to the

following: the “family” way of recruiting women into

the business elite remains the most effective

(Voronkova, 2019). Note that in the current works of

foreign authors, attention is also focused on such a

way for women to enter the business elite as an

inheritance of a family enterprise (Campopiano,

Massis, Rinaldi & Sciascia, 2017), (Erwee, Henry &

Kong, 2013).

4 DISCUSSION OF RESULTS

The results of the study showed that the first steps in

studying the "woman and business" problem were

made by sociologists.

The strategies developed by the representatives of

sociology and the formulated conclusions need

additional study, legalization, and extrapolation to the

Russian legal basis, with all its features.

In our work, we paid attention to only a small

fraction of the problems of women's

WFLAW 2021 - INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC FORUM ON JURISPRUDENCE

entrepreneurship. It is clear that there are many more

of them. These are the rank of a woman in the family

business, and the trajectory of women receiving

business education, and the role of women in the

development of small business, etc.

A clearly defined trend for women to acquire the

status of self-employed is also important. Suffice it to

note that according to the Federal Tax Service of

Russia

(https://www.nalog.ru/rn77/news/activities_fts/1066

2978/), since the beginning of the application of the

experimental tax legal regime for citizens, the number

of self-employed amounted to 1.8 million, of which

about 40% (747 thousand) - women. The income

received by women from their business in the status

of self-employed amounted to 32% of the total

income of all citizens with this status. At the same

time, in a number of constituent entities of the

Russian Federation, the share of self-employed

women prevails over the share of men (Republic of

Buryatia - 58.66%, Kurgan Oblast - 55.62%,

Zabaykalsky Krai - 55.13%, Altai Republic -

54.62%). It is obvious to us that the abovementioned

results are largely due to the digitization of public

services, which made doing business in a self-

employment format more comfortable (Ershova,

Trofimova, Davtyan-Davudova & Kochetkova,

2019).

In general, as rightly noted in the literature,

“expanding access to higher education, the formation

of a system of inheritance of family firms in favor of

daughters, the emergence of women among major

financial leaders and the growing influence of the

private sector lead to an increase in interest in the field

of female entrepreneurship” (Voronkova, 2019, p.

159).

Public organizations are called upon to play an

important role in this case. As a positive example, we

will cite the activities of the Committee for the

Development of Women's Entrepreneurship OPORA

RUSSIA, which implements programs to support

women's entrepreneurial initiatives

(https://womanopora.ru/projects/) and popularizes

the success stories of women in business

(https://womanopora.ru/ history).

5 CONCLUSIONS

The results of the study allowed drawing up some

conclusions. While Russian sociologists have already

made a very successful attempt to comprehend the

problems under consideration, in legal science,

interest in gender scenarios in business is in its

infancy, showing gaps for scientific research.

There is a need to develop a Russian legal

doctrine, and on its basis - an integral legal

mechanism for regulation and, in particular, support

for women's entrepreneurship. This is especially

significant during the recovery of the Russian

economy after COVID-19.

It seems that the minimum necessary support

measures should cover:

- special financing and credit - a similar system

for small businesses can be used as a basis (Ershova,

Tarasenko, 2018);

- preferential taxation - current models are

presented in foreign legislation (Kolchin, Ha Thi,

2019);

- acceptable educational programs, including

those aimed at mastering digital literacy (Ershova,

Tarasenko, Enkova & Trofimova, 2020);

- special aspects of the labor law status for women

entrepreneurs with minor children.

When building a system of legal regulation, it is

important to take into account the foreign experience

that has brought results (Kunitsina, Lipina, 2015),

while preserving the national characteristics of

Russian women's entrepreneurship.

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