Female Solo Self-Employment

This paper focuses on the features of female entrepreneurship; mainly the solo selfemployed. Based on a brief review of the existing literature we identify some major lines of argumentation, which treat female self-employment in the context of its determinants. The further discussion turns to the investigation of data from official statistics. In particular, cross-country comparisons of the development of female self-employment within the global framework of the labour market highlight major aspects and divergencies of female self-employment ratios. In the next step, the argumentation introduces the results of an own empirical survey of microentrepreneurs in the federal state of Carinthia (Austria), where we discuss findings based on the gender aspect. The results indicate that women run smaller companies, are largely part-time selfemployed, represent the vast majority in solo self-employment, earn less and have shorter times of involvement. In contrast, well-being and happiness are likely to be higher in firms and economic activities run by women.