Women in business: entrepreneurship, ethics and efficiency Marta Peris-Ortiz & Carlos Rueda-Armengot & Diana Benito Osorio # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 Abstract This article begins by reviewing some of the main theoretical approaches to entrepreneurship. We then discuss the measures proposed in the literature to benefit women, facilitating reconciliation of work and family life and examining the view of authors who consider the negative effects of these measures. Finally, we contemplate situations where the measures benefiting women are based on economic or ethical reasons. This last section qualifies the universalist approach underlying work-family life reconciliation, describing the context for interaction between women and entrepreneurial activity. Keywords Women . Entrepreneurship . Universalist approach . Ethics Introduction Data shows that women are important in business. The National Foundation for Women Business Owners indicated that in 1995 38% of business owners in the United States were women and they employed a quarter of the labour force. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (2005), 23.3% of the country’ s top executives are women and they account for 45.9% of executives in general. In other capitalist countries such as Spain, which can be considered to occupy an average position among the most developed countries, 29.14% of micro firms (less than 10 Int Entrep Manag J DOI 10.1007/s11365-011-0177-0 M. Peris-Ortiz (*) : C. Rueda-Armengot Dept. Organización de Empresas, Universitat Politècnica de València, Camino de Vera s/n, 46022 Valencia, Spain e-mail: mperis@doe.upv.es C. Rueda-Armengot e-mail: crueda@doe.upv.es D. Benito Osorio Dept. Economía de la Empresa (Administración, Dirección y Organización), Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Paseo de los Artilleros, s/n, 28032 Madrid, Spain e-mail: Diana.Benito@urjc.es