Gender Stereotypes in Leadership Construction Within Family Business

Entrepreneurship has been historically considered a “man’s” domain and in mainstream literature entrepreneurs has traditionally been described with typical masculine qualities. As a consequence, when women engage themselves in an entrepreneurial activity, they have to face a gender stereotype. For this reason, several scholars have tried to understand how women entrepreneurs face gender stereotypes and how they manage conflicts between femininity and entrepreneurship. Existing studies on this topic have analysed women business founders or involved in family businesses, mainly as second-generation leaders, or aspiring leaders. In this paper, we consider both women entrepreneurs who founded their own businesses (founders) and daughter who entered their family business (successors). Our aim is to investigate strategies adopted to face gender stereotypes that women encountered during their entrepreneurial experience. Two different strategies emerged: “passive resignation” and “active opposition”. The initial business settings seem to play an important role in the analysed cases. In particular, women who succeed to their father mainly suffer gender stereotypes and seem to be less favoured in overcoming them.