Kvinnor som är entreprenörer Bestämningsfaktorer och regional variation

The proportion of women entrepreneurs in Sweden is, as in many countries, smaller than the proportion of men entrepreneurs. Sweden has therefore created political measures with the ambition to increase women entrepreneurship. However, knowledge about the determinants of women entrepreneurship is needed in order to enable the promotion of it and, at the same time one can question the treatment of women entrepreneurs as a homogenous group. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the determinants of women entrepreneurship and whether these determinants fluctuate regionally. If this proves to be the case, a more spatial/individual approach should be used, when creating measures to promote entrepreneurship. My choice of regions to investigate fell on Stockholm and Jämtland due to the fact that they have a large proportion of women entrepreneurs in comparison to their population, but also because they can be said to represent two extremes of Swedish industry. The results indicate that there are variations in the determinants between the regions, mainly due to different labour markets, mixture of populations and household compositions. The level of unemployment is greater in Jämtland than in Stockholm, which constitutes a push-factor towards entrepreneurship in Jämtland. The proportion of women born outside of Sweden is almost four times as big in Stockholm as in Jämtland, working as a push-factor towards entrepreneurship in Stockholm. Finally, the proportion of married women is greater in Jämtland than in Stockholm and the effect of children on entrepreneurship is relatively greater in Jämtland than in Stockholm. The difference in family composition affects entrepreneurship both as a pull-factor, due to differences in household income and as a push-factor in terms of being a labour choice, since it is considered easier to combine with family and household work rather than employment. Keywords: entrepreneur, women, logistic regression, regional fluctuatio