Shaping the Future of Enterprise Education for Female Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurship education is seen as a way to help encourage those aspiring to entrepreneurship and better equip those already running their own business. However, enrolment rates for women in entrepreneurship education on offer within Higher Education Institutions continue to be lower than those of men (Petridou et al. 2009) and an unconscious masculine bias in promotion, teaching methods and course content is evidenced in the literature (Jones and Warhuus, 2014;Jones, 2011). This working paper draws on qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with established female entrepreneurs across the UK around factors they think can better equip future female entrepreneurial leaders. It is aimed to develop innovative and relevant solutions to better appeal and encourage female entrepreneurs to enterprise education and understand how we as enterprise educators could best meet their needs. A key theme of resilience and it’s manifestations in the female entrepreneurial reality is emerging and the implications of this to enterprise education and the remainder of the DEWCH project is discussed.