Female entrepreneurship in Serbia in the course of transition

The subject and aim of the thesis is to collect material with facts proving that women entrepreneurship is a factor of economic development and that national economy is wealthier if women have equal access to resources, employment and business. The thesis is focused on self-employment as the widespread form of women entrepreneurship, especially in transition countries. The comparative analysis of trends in women entrepreneurship encompasses trends in Europe, developing countries, regions of the West Balkans and Eastern Europe, as well as the example of Serbia, which includes the primary empirical research. The result of the comparative analysis shows that women entrepreneurship in transition countries is entrepreneurship of need, while in the European countries it is for the most part stimulated by quest for new business challenges and chances. Also, in the countries in the region, this type of entrepreneurship almost to the same extent has features of both social category and economic, developmental one. Economies in transition are to a greater extent burdened by unemployment, public debt, insufficient competitiveness, which greatly explains the fact that in these societies vulnerable categories of population incline to entrepreneurship as the last chance to get self-employed. In Serbia, to the social dimension is also contributing the fact that there is no system support to women entrepreneurship; and even if it exists, it is mainly related to subsidies for self-employment and serves as active measures at the labour market, aiming at reduction of general unemployment rate, in particular women unemployment, whose share in the unemployed population is higher than men's. It is interesting that standing trend of gap decrease between women and men unemployment, which has been additionally accelerated since the beginning of the economic crisis ( Arandarenko, 2011),is perceptible in Serbia.As a probable explanation for this “positive discrimination” is mentioned higher resistance against the employment crisis in the public sector, in which women‟s share is above average. However, one should also take into account the fact that women, more often than men, due to being discouraged when seeking a job, withdraw into inactivity, whereby this may be one of the reasons why the unemployment gap has been diminishing. Women are the largest vulnerable group at the labour market. Although they account for one half of active population, they are minority among labour-market