The subject and aim of the thesis is to collect material with facts proving that women entrepreneurship is a factor of economic development and that national economy is wealthier if women have equal ...access to resources, employment and business. The thesis is focused on self-employment as the widespread form of women entrepreneurship, especially in transition countries. The comparative analysis of trends in women entrepreneurship encompasses trends in Europe, developing countries, regions of the West Balkans and Eastern Europe, as well as the example of Serbia, which includes the primary empirical research. The result of the comparative analysis shows that women entrepreneurship in transition countries is entrepreneurship of need, while in the European countries it is for the most part stimulated by quest for new business challenges and chances. Also, in the countries in the region, this type of entrepreneurship almost to the same extent has features of both social category and economic, developmental one. Economies in transition are to a greater extent burdened by unemployment, public debt, insufficient competitiveness, which greatly explains the fact that in these societies vulnerable categories of population incline to entrepreneurship as the last chance to get self-employed. In Serbia, to the social dimension is also contributing the fact that there is no system support to women entrepreneurship; and even if it exists, it is mainly related to subsidies for self-employment and serves as active measures at the labour market, aiming at reduction of general unemployment rate, in particular women unemployment, whose share in the unemployed population is higher than men's. It is interesting that standing trend of gap decrease between women and men unemployment, which has been additionally accelerated since the beginning of the economic crisis ( Arandarenko, 2011),is perceptible in Serbia.As a probable explanation for this “positive discrimination” is mentioned higher resistance against the employment crisis in the public sector, in which women‟s share is above average. However, one should also take into account the fact that women, more often than men, due to being discouraged when seeking a job, withdraw into inactivity, whereby this may be one of the reasons why the unemployment gap has been diminishing. Women are the largest vulnerable group at the labour market. Although they account for one half of active population, they are minority among labour-market participants, and even more conspicuous minority among the employed. However, active labour-market programmes – in Serbia as well as worldwide – are very rarely limited to women only, although they often may have implicit or explicit goals aimed towards gender equality improvement at the labour market. The theory of economy has established the existence of good principled as well as empirical reasons for labour-market programmes to contain a strong gender component. In the Bergman and Van der Berg study on effects of active labour-market policies on women in Europe (2006) it was shown that average effects of gender universal active programmes are higher for women than for men. This result is particularly accentuated regarding training programmes; however, it is also present in employment subsidies, while gender effects are counterbalanced only in the programmes of mediation and in job seekingsupport. Unfortunately, the National Employment Service in Serbia fails to keep systematic records on participants in active programmes by demographic characteristics, including gender. Therefore, inter alia, the research subject of this doctoral thesis is also the attempt to determine the efficiency of these programmes when it comes to self-employment of women, which is addressed in Chapter IV, the key chapter of the thesis. Target group of the research conducted in the course of 2010 were women who went through the self-employment training in 2002 and 2003, in the scope of the NES self-employment programme, and who established their own companies after the completed training, in the period until 2006. The aim of this research was to establish sustainability of these enterprises formed by means of incentive funds offered by the State, i.e. the National Employment Service. Out of 96 companies that were mapped in 2006 as registered after the training, 51 are still active today, while 45 are probably closed down, given that they cannot be found either in official registers or at the existing addresses. It is interesting that in companies from the old sample that were included into the new research sample, now generate dearnings from the main activity of the company have in ⅔ of cases become the significant, even the only source of income. Practically, for more than one half of participants – women entrepreneurs, the part-time work has become their main activity and for the majority the only source of income. The high percentage of closed down enterprises is ascribed to the fact that after establishment these companies were left to themselves during the so-called incubation period up to 3 years (by GEM methodology up to 3.5 years). The problem of lack of non-financial institutional support was highlighted later as well, in the 2011 research (SeCons and FREN 2011), wherefore one of the recommendations is to provide for start-up companies mentoring and consultant support during the start-up period, to support their sustainability. Reduction of taxes and other levies is a financial measure that has most direct impact on the business stability of these companies. Out of 96 mapped enterprises in 2007 into the research sample 2010 were included 57 women: 38 entrepreneurs and 19 ex-entrepreneurs (who had closed down their companies). Out of 19 former women entrepreneurs, 8 switched over to working for salary for an employer, while the other 11 are unemployed and inactive, meaning that they are not seeking a job and are not existentially disadvantaged. When reviewing the working status of former entrepreneurs in the period 2007 – 2010, one notices the reduction of self-employment and the increase of salary employment, which is consistent with the previously stated lack of institutional support to entrepreneurs of need. When comparing the present wages and those they had as entrepreneurs, one draws a conclusion that wages are relatively same or somewhat higher (which may be explained by inflation and other economic factors having effect in the past few years), thus also being an important reason of the decreasing self-employment trend as compared to the work for salary. Former women entrepreneurs would not decide to establish another company; while on the other hand, a group of 38 women entrepreneurs who sustained their businesses declared that they planned development of their businesses in the coming period. Despite their optimism, the data show that their businesses have stagnated, pointing to the necessity of diversified institutional measures of support to sustainability and development of these companies. Moreover, these companies should have planned allocations for research and development, which is a foreseeable investment only in a relatively stable environment that has not been the feature of our economy so far. In the European policy of entrepreneurship development, women entrepreneurship is one of indicators. It is also the proof that this entrepreneurship is acknowledged for its contribution to economic growth, within the wider contribution of the SME sector to the gross added value. In the Act on Small Enterprises, in 2010, were proposed indicators for monitoring of women entrepreneurship development, in the scope of the first principle “creating environment in which entrepreneurs and family companies may develop and entrepreneurship be awarded.” Five areas were proposed for monitoring indicators of women entrepreneurship development, being: framework for support to the policy for encouragement of women entrepreneurship and data on women companies; training; financing; national network of women entrepreneurship, transfer of business; there is ongoing further advancement. Namely, one of the problems of women entrepreneurship is lack of coordination of methodologies of its statistical monitoring by countries. It is primarily the issue of non-compliance of definition of women entrepreneurship, wherefore it is expected from improvement of the structural business statistics within the Eurostat in the further harmonization process in European countries to enable a uniform platform for women entrepreneurship monitoring. The most accepted definition of a woman entrepreneur is that she is at the same time the owner of more than 1% of capital and company manager. According to this criterion, the share of women entrepreneurs in Serbia in the total number of active entrepreneurs amounts to 26%, which is slightly below the European average (some 33%). Despite the relatively small difference, one should take into account that conditions in our country and in European countries differ considerably and that in our country sustainability of women businesses is essentially jeopardized to a greater extent. It is therefore necessary to establish a broader context of the State policy, within which should be secured complementarity and time interconnection between different programmes and initiatives, both governmental and those of the civil sector, with the purpose to increase not only the share of women in entrepreneurship but also their sustainability. Since small and medium-sized enterprises are considered to be the “generators of development and of new work posts”, implicitly enterprises owned by women who actively manage them represent an important segment of economic growth and development. Given the economic projections till 2020, by conservative scenario BDP growth will amount to 3% per year, and employment growth 1% per year (Arandarenko, 2011), it is realistic to expect stagnati
Ekonomska i financijska kriza koja je poharala Europu 2008. godine različito se odrazila na pojedine skupine stanovništva. Rast nezaposlenosti posebno je zabilježen kod mladih, a kod starijih radnika ...mnogi koji su zbog krize ostali bez posla nisu bili u mogućnosti ponovno pronaći zaposlenje. Stoga se kao opcija za aktivno sudjelovanje u svijetu rada za obje skupine javlja samozapošljavanje. Ovaj rad je posvećen upravo istraživanju samozapošljavanja ovih dviju skupina u zemlji koja je zabilježila jednu od najvećih i najdugotrajnijih posljedica krize – Hrvatskoj. Osnovni cilj je istražiti razlike u tranziciji ka samozaposlenosti mladih i starih, u razdoblju prije i tijekom krize, razmatrajući dva odvojena procesa: (i) samozapošljavanje iz nužde (kojem prethodi stanje nezaposlenosti) i (ii) samozapošljavanje zbog prilike (kojem prethodi stanje zaposlenosti). Istraživanje je provedeno temeljem EU podataka Ankete o radnoj snazi. Osnovni rezultati pokazuju da samozapošljavanje iz nužde dominira za obje dobne skupine, pri čemu je posebno izraženo za starije, dok je samozapošljavanje zbog prilike donekle izraženije kod mlađe populacije. Međutim, kriza negativno utječe na oba tipa samozapošljavanja. Dekompozicija jaza – primjenom Fairlie i Blinder-Oaxaca metodologije – pokazuje da se jaz u slučaju samozapošljavanja zbog nužde između ove dvije podskupine tijekom krize povećava, dok se u slučaju samozapošljavanja zbog prilike taj jaz smanjuje. Dodatno ispitivanje prediktora važnih za utvrđivanje hoće li mlada nezaposlena osoba postati samozaposlena ili zaposlenik tijekom razdoblja krize pokazuje da se zajedničke karakteristike odnose na udio zaposlenih odraslih osoba i udio djece u kućanstvu.
