Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore and discuss to what extent and why women's entrepreneurship contributes to rural economic viability and gender equality in an advanced welfare state.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors use detailed register data to explore men's and women's rural businesses in the most common industries for rural women entrepreneurs in the Swedish welfare state. Based on a literature review, the authors develop hypotheses and analyse how family, business and industry factors influence earnings.

Findings

Women's rural entrepreneurship is important for rural viability, as women's businesses provide a wide range of services necessary for life in rural areas. Although women's rural businesses are not significantly smaller than those of men, women's income is lower and more sensitive to business and industry variables. Marriage has positive effects for the earnings of men but negative effects for the earnings of women. The authors argue that the results are contingent on the gendering of entrepreneurship and industries, as well as on the local rural gender contracts. For these reasons, the importance of women entrepreneurs for rural viability is not reflected in their own incomes. Hence, women's rural entrepreneurship does not result in (economic) gender equality.

Originality/value

Entrepreneurship scholars rarely explore women's rural entrepreneurship, and particularly not in the Global North or Western welfare states. Therefore, this empirical study from Sweden provides novel information on how the gender order on the business, industry and family levels influences the income of men and women entrepreneurs differently.

中文翻译：

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女性农村企业：经济可行性还是性别平等？– 来自瑞典语境的数据库研究

目的

本文的目的是探讨和讨论女性创业在多大程度上以及为什么在先进的福利国家对农村经济活力和性别平等做出贡献。

设计/方法/方法

作者使用详细的登记数据来探索瑞典福利国家农村女企业家最常见的行业中男性和女性的农村企业。基于文献回顾，作者提出假设并分析家庭、商业和行业因素如何影响收入。

发现

妇女的农村创业对农村的生存能力很重要，因为妇女的企业为农村地区的生活提供了广泛的服务。尽管女性的农村企业规模并不明显小于男性，但女性的收入较低，并且对商业和行业变量更为敏感。婚姻对男性的收入有正面影响，但对女性的收入有负面影响。作者认为，结果取决于企业家精神和行业的性别化，以及当地农村的性别契约。由于这些原因，女企业家对农村生存能力的重要性并未反映在她们自己的收入中。因此，女性的农村创业不会导致（经济）性别平等。

原创性/价值

创业学者很少探讨女性的农村创业，尤其是在全球北方或西方福利国家。因此，这项来自瑞典的实证研究提供了关于商业、行业和家庭层面的性别秩序如何以不同方式影响男性和女性企业家收入的新信息。