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 i...