In her book The New Female Entrepreneur, co-authored with William Walstad, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln economics professor, Kourilsky examines how a collective of parents, educators, and the media on the whole offer a more male-centric view of entrepreneurship, leaving women unprepared for the challenges and potential rewards of owning their own businesses.
BusinessWeek Online reporter Stacy Perman recently spoke with Kourilsky about barriers female entrepreneurs continue to face and the ways in which they can break through them. Edited excerpts of their conversation follow:
Q: Your research shows that nearly 6 out of 10 female teenagers and 4 out of 10 female adults would like to start their own small businesses, but these aspirations are routinely discouraged. Why?
A: We’re educated to take a job rather than make a job. And this attitude applies to men as well, but the culture often has a differing impact on men and women. It has been going on consistently. It starts in kindergarten. If you go to a career day, you hear about professions but not much about people who initiated their own ventures. It’s not just coming from schools, it’s coming from families, too. Are you telling your daughter to grow up to be an entrepreneur or a teacher?
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