Fitting in whilst standing out: Fostering enterprise development among Irish rural women

Policymakers and academics have come to consider rural entrepreneurship as a key source of eco-nomic and social development. Over the last decade, as potential creators of new businesses, wom-en have been recognised as catalysts for economic growth within the European countryside. Rural women are attempting to diversify the local economic base, by engaging in multifarious business endeavours both within and beyond the farmyard. Despite these endeavours gaining increased trac-tion among academic and policy practitioners, little attention has been paid to the development of Irish female entrepreneurs and their role in the future sustainability of rural regions. This research explores the experiences of female entrepreneurs in rural Ireland. It concentrates on their relation-ship with entrepreneurship and the rural milieu and examines the current supports available to Irish rural women. It is well-documented that female entrepreneurs experience a challenging pathway when pursuing entrepreneurship and therefore require additional support in order to aid in their de-velopment. This research examines the resources and supports available to female rural entrepre-neurs in the Republic of Ireland in order to contend with these challenges and raises questions about the need to introduce targeted supports and positive discriminatory measures to ensure great-er participation of women in rural entrepreneurship. One such avenue is that of the LEADER Pro-gramme. Whilst utilizing the previous and current LEADER programme as a means to measure rural women’s participation in enterprise funding programmes, this research investigates whether LEADER should better position itself to deliver gender specific enterprise supports to rural areas of Europe. It argues that in order to afford rural women an opportunity to play a key role in the fu-ture sustainability of rural areas, considerable resources and supports are required for female rural entrepreneurs and concludes that governmental intervention is required to reduce the disparity emerging between urban and rural female entrepreneurs.2024-07-0