The female entrepreneur's point of view and the Italian economy

During the period from 1950 to 2000, gender-based entrepreneurial associations (above all, AIDDA) have provided a decisive contribution to a new women’s entrepreneurial identity in Italy that extends beyond gender stereotypes connected with the family. The gender-based professional networks influenced the traditional social representation of entrepreneurship as an activity generally characterized by features identified with the male gender. Moreover, during the 1980s, media portrayals of a new generation of women entrepreneurs were important. In fact, in harmony with the new Italy of the “personalization of leadership” and of “political show”—as happened in other countries of that same period—they proposed new models of female professional success. The present portrayal of Italian men and women entrepreneurs tends to be oppositional, in part because women entrepreneurs’ organizations are behaving increasingly as political players.