THE RESILIENCE OF MINORITY AND FEMALE ENTREPRENEURS: A LOOK AT ETHNICITY AND GENDER

Abstract

By exploring the resilience skills of African-American, Hispanic and female entrepreneurs, this study examines entrepreneurs who face great obstacles, but still start more businesses than their White counterparts (Fairlie and Robb, 2009). The experiences of minorities and women lead to the development of risk and protective factors that result in differences in resilience. Here we present a model of resilience informed by the psychology and educational literatures which illustrates how particular experiences of minorities and women enable them to develop higher levels of resilience. In this model, the adaptive cultures of women and minorities equip them to overcome the adversity which arises from their social stratification as marginalized groups. We then test this model using a nationally representative, stratified random sample of 340 Black, Hispanic and White male and female entrepreneurs. The empirical results from two-way ANOVAs, Kruskal-Wallis H tests and multiple regression analysis indicate that Blacks and Hispanics had higher social resilience than White entrepreneurs, and that women had greater self and social resilience than male entrepreneurs.