Women’s Entrepreneurship Opportunities Through Cooperatives Development, Serbian Case

Women cooperatives are most often considered to be a social entrepreneurs /enterprises emerging as a response to many common problems in transition economies as Serbia is, structural unemployment, government budget deficits, inadequacy of traditional social policies and need for more active social integration measures. The main objectives of this paper are to emphasis and illustrate the importance of the main advantages of the women’s entrepreneurship through cooperatives, as well as to present the Serbian case and experience. A theoretical framework of the phenomena and institutions in the field are presented to.Methods used are desk research of available data and studies consulted. Main results for Serbia are given for female entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs, and cooperatives and the sectorial operations. In 2016 Serbia has been ranked on 30.9at GEI, more than 50% lower than first ranked, by pillars – Entrepreneurial abilities, like technology absorption, completion are very low, as well as product innovation, internationalization and risk capital in within entrepreneurial aspirations. Within 900 cooperatives, one third can be considered to be women, mostly operating in agriculture. As niches are opened up both by privatization of welfare services ad by decentralization of administration, where social enterprise are encouraged as public good providers, and new legislative and agriculture support, research on women’s entrepreneurs in cooperatives would contribute to social entrepreneurial activity, to recognition and exploitation of new opportunities to serve the social mission, engaging in a process of innovation, and acting without being limited by resources currently in hand.