Female Entrepreneurship in East and South-East Asia

Preface

To date, studies of gender and economic development in Asia have considered women mostly as economic agents in labor markets. But Asian women are not only laborers in the fields and factory workers. They are also producers, entrepreneurs and investors. Entrepreneurship, and more specifically female entrepreneurship as both concept and activity, has been growing in importance in Asia since the mid-1990s, with an acceleration at the beginning of this decade.¹ But the image and idea people have of female entrepreneurs in Asia are generally, first, that there are very few of them; and second, that they are mainly in the informal or formal micro-sector, producing relatively low-added-value goods and unsophisticated traditional services. ...