Women Entrepreneurs and Work-Family Conflict: Insights from Italy

Entrepreneurship scholars agree on recognizing women’s entrepreneurship as a key driver for economic growth in both developed and developing countries, by being able not only to stimulate productive work but also to achieve gender equality and to increase wealth. However, despite such economic and social potential, many criticalities are still related to female entrepreneurship. One significant issue related to female entrepreneurship is connected to the role that women entrepreneurs play in society: they are still the primary nurturers and care givers in the family, thus, they are generally exposed to higher levels of work-life conflicts in comparison to men. Stemming from such an awareness, through an empirical investigation of 379 women-owned firms, this paper aims to shed light on women entrepreneurs’ work-life conflicts by empirically investigating how work characteristics and family characteristics may affect work interference with family (WIF) and family interference with work (FIW), contextualizing the study within Italy. Results mainly confirm our hypotheses, showing that family characteristics affect FIW and work characteristics affect WIF. Surprisingly, family involvement and parental demand positively relate to WIF.