| In developed countries, the growing participation of women in entrepreneurship, a traditional male dominated activity has given rise to an area of new scholarly concern: women entrepreneurship. Some of the addressed questions are: Who is the woman entrepreneur? Is she different from male entrepreneur? Is she different from other social groups? Does she need specific programs?; In developing countries, recent economic policies recognize the relevance of programs directed to women as a means to alleviate poverty. However, studies on the real conditions of women entrepreneurs are scarce.; The purpose of this work is to describe the situation of women entrepreneurs, owners of small and medium industries in Merida, Venezuela, a developing society such as Venezuela, according to the framework of different types of capital (Brush, Greene and Hart, 2001; Brush et al., 2001; and Greene and Brush, 2004). Human, social, financial, organizational, technological and physical capitals are different types of capital, which constitute the building blocks of businesses. This framework might help explaining gender differences, considering that women and men come into entrepreneurship with different endowments of human and social capital.; Evidence on the situation of women entrepreneurs in Merida shows that they do not enter alone into entrepreneurship, but are accompanied by her family. Their main capital is their social capital, and it basically consists of their family. The strength of family ties is a close-knit network that has positive and negative effects for the development of the woman entrepreneurship. On the positive side, strong ties provide emotional support and flexibility which are advantages for business survival. On the negative side, they provide redundant information that reduces the knowledge of new business opportunities, information, and influences.; In relation to social capital, women entrepreneurs have a significant greater percentage (90%) of family businesses than men entrepreneurs. In contrast, in relation to organizational capital, the situation of women and men entrepreneurs is similar. The situation of women entrepreneurs in Merida has the paradoxical effect that strong ties, breeding local cohesion, lead to overall fragmentation; while social capital is strong due to family ties, organizational capital is weak. Entrepreneurs prefer informal and occasional relationships to solve common problems instead of creating and trusting formal organizations. These findings are relevant to understand the divorce between entrepreneurial organizations and the entrepreneurs' associative interests. |
