Women in family business: a literature review

Taking into account previous contributions (Sharma, 2004; Sharma et al., 2007; Martinez Jimenez, 2009), the current work aims to better understand the state of the art about research in the field of the role of women in family business and to identify future research directions. The paper is based on the framework proposed by Martinez Jimenez (2009), and pursues the aim of updating that article and identifying eventual changes and trends in the literature, occurred in the last years. The update of literature review on the role of women in family firms will allow to identify most relevant open issues and to propose future research directions to cope with them. Both situations of women “entrepreneurs”, who have established her-own company, and women “managers”, who run the family business, are considered. 121 articles were analyzed, that have been published in a dozen of different journals since the 1967. Since 1967, the 61% of articles analyzed, have been published before 2009 while the remaining 39% after Martinez Jimenez’s contribution. The topics were articulated according to categories proposed by Martinez Jimenez (2009): obstacles (women’s invisibility and the glass ceiling, emotional leadership, succession and primogeniture) and positive aspects (professional career and running the company). Based on the critical analysis of previous literature, a research framework is proposed, on the role of women in family firms, main drivers and obstacles, that can be a useful starting point for both national or international future research, for practical insights to family firms and policy makers.