Gender and entrepreneurship in tourism: an analysis of tourism graduates’ entrepreneurial profile

• Autor(a) principal: Costa, Carlos
• Data de Publicação: 2012
• Outros Autores: Carvalho, Inês, Caçador, Sandra, Breda, Zélia
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/38900
• topic: Entrepreneurship; Gender; Tourism graduates; Portugal; Necessity and opportunity entrepreneurship

This paper aims to compare the entrepreneurial profile of female and male tourism graduates in Portugal, namely in what concerns their motivations to start a new business. The concepts of ‘necessity’ and ‘opportunity’ entrepreneurship are used. There is a higher proportion of male entrepreneurs than female entrepreneurs. Men are also more likely to be opportunity entrepreneurs than women. Moreover, there is an association between being an opportunity entrepreneur and an employer, whereas the proportion of necessity entrepreneurs is higher among independent workers. Salaries of opportunity entrepreneurs are also higher. There is also a positive relation between being an opportunity entrepreneur and one’s level of education. However, if the desire to start one’s own business is analysed, the proportion of men and women who would like to start their own business is very similar. Moreover, family life and having children seems to have a significant impact on men and women’s desire to start their own business.