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Abstract
Women entrepreneurs have long been an understudied topic in business history. This article contributes to fill this gap by analysing Italian women’s entrepreneurship from the mid twentieth century to 2016. It is based on a new dataset concerning the profiles of the 80 women who were successful entrepreneurs and became Cavalieri del Lavoro (Knights of Labour), i.e. they were decorated with the Ordine al ‘Merito del Lavoro’ (Order of Merit for Labour), the highest recognition for achievements in the world of business in Italy. The dataset also includes a comparable sample of men who obtained the same award to single out the main similarities and differences between men and women entrepreneurs. This article employs a quantitative prosopographic approach: after presenting some descriptive statistics and some exemplary cases of successful women entrepreneurs, it uses cluster analysis to identify typological groups of women versus men entrepreneurs. The main results show that the institutional context and gender stereotypes slowed down the development of Italian women’s entrepreneurial abilities. Women entrepreneurs tend to cluster in family firms and to have become entrepreneurs by inheritance, whereas they have been handicapped in all other fields relevant to entrepreneurial success: access to education (especially STEM), managerial career, and experience abroad. Nonetheless, women entrepreneurs operated beyond women’s niches tied to the traditional ideology of femininity, e.g. textiles, garment and services. Several women operated in sectors such as chemicals and engineering in which many Italian industrial districts are specialised.
Acknowledgment
We would like to thank the participants to the ABH Conference “The Human Factor in Business History” (Glasgow, 29 June-1 July 2017), the EBHA 21st Annual Congress “Transformation in Business and Society: A Historical Approach” (Vienna, 24-26 August 2017), the Convegno ASSI “Imprenditori e manager nella storia economica” (Milan, 6-7 October 2017), the 8th EH/tune Workshop “Clashing Generations in Italian Economic History” (Siena, 22-23 November 2018), and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments. The usual disclaimer applies.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 The law of coverture was abolished between the 1850s and the 1880s in various American states, in 1882 in the UK and in 1919 in Italy (Curli, 2002).
2 According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, starting entrepreneurs are those who have taken steps to start a new business but have not yet paid salaries or wages for more than three months; new entrepreneurs are those who are running new businesses that have been in operation for between three months and 42 months; and established business owners are those who are running a business in operation for more than 42 months (GEM, 2017).
3 To these, we must add some local history studies that deal with women’s entrepreneurship in a limited geographical area. See, for example, Curli (2005) and Castagnoli (2007c).
4 A survey conducted on the 250 Italian largest joint stock companies by total assets showed that in 2010 only 7.9 percent of their board members were women (Rinaldi, Tagliazucchi & Vasta, Citation2019).
5 These biographies were drawn up by the Federazione Nazionale dei Cavalieri del Lavoro (National Federation of Knights of Labour) on the basis of interviews with the appointees. Thus, the biographies express the Knights of Labour’s views and self-perceptions.
6 www.cavalieridellavoro.it/english (last visit on 24 July 2017).
7 As anticipated, the honour of Cavaliere del Lavoro was a recognition for achievements in the world of business. Therefore, all those (both men and women) who obtained it were successful stories. In this sense, our dataset suffers from a bias with respect from what would have resulted from the “ideal” but impossible construction of a fully representative random sample. Still, we believe it can provide many insights on similarities and differences between men and women entrepreneurs.
8 The appointment of the first women in the 1960s was probably the result to the changing perception of the role of women in the Italian society that had led to the enactment of the 1963 law that allowed the entry of women in the judiciary as well as of the action of AIDDA (Associazione Imprenditrici e Donne Dirigenti d’Azienda = Association of Italian Female Entrepreneurs and Business Executives), the first entrepreneurial association of women in Italy, that was founded in 1961. The aim of AIDDA was to highlight the contribution of women in top management, and to build an organization able to overcome the prejudices about the achievements of women in the field of work (Castagnoli, 2007).
9 Industries have been reclassified in six macro-areas according to the Italian official definitions of Istat-Ateco 2007: agriculture, manufacturing, utilities, constructions, services, banks and insurance.
10 Thus, the Italian government seems to have behaved in an opposite way to the Dutch government that, since the 1970s, started to purposely appoint women in the boards of directors of SOEs, thereby prompting an opening and democratisation of the corporate elite (Heemskerk & Fennema, 2014).
11 On the role of localised pools of knowledge as one of the main competitive advantages in industrial districts, see Marshall (1890).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Alberto Rinaldi
Alberto Rinaldi is Associate Professor of Economic History at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy.
Giulia Tagliazucchi
Giulia Tagliazucchi is Post-doc Research Fellow in Management Studies at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy