Faced with “the actual and too negative experi­ences of dealing with men, or more often, the per­ception that men would not be helpful” (McGowan and Hampton 2007: 122), female entrepreneurs in male dominated contexts may opt to carve out female-only or mostly female associations, and, certainly, there are increasing numbers of formal­ized female-only networks worldwide […]

Business ownership is considerably segregated by sex (Sappleton 2009). This fact is aptly illustrated in figure 1. This shows US business ownership by sex and three-digit industry classification in 2002 (the latest available data). While most businesses are male-owned, the differences according to sector are quite evident. Women are overrepre­sented in Healthcare and Social Assistance […]

Social capital/social networks is one of the most heavily studied topics in the field of entrepre­neurship. This is because personal relations are increasingly being viewed as the key to the construction, functioning and effectiveness of a viable business enterprise (Granovetter, 1973; 1985). It is increasingly recognized that success in business is linked to not what […]

Gender, Organisations and Networks Institutions are not gender neutral. Sociologists have long recognized that business organizations, and the environments in which they are based are gendered, and the gender is generally male. As Acker (1991: 166) has argued: “Individual men and particular groups of men do not always win in these processes, but masculinity always […]

Computer Mediated Communication forBusiness Women and Professionals Natalie Anne Sappleton Manchester Metropolitan University, UK INTRODUCTION Since the 1970s, there has been a swift and sizeable uptake of business ownership amongst women in the United States (U. S. Census Bureau 2002; Lowrey 2005). Women now own around 40 percent of all non-agricultural businesses — amounting to […]

The data collected for this study was strictly de­scriptive in nature. For this foundational study, the individual cases were categorically sorted within and analyzed for patterns within the groupings of the keywords used for the search. Four distinctive groupings were analyzed in this study: groups associated with disabilities or having a disabil­ity, race/ethnicity, gender, and […]

In order to explore the identity representation of disability as well as gender identity in a virtual world environment, a survey was conducted ofuser groups in Second Life, the virtual world chosen for this study. Given the size (in terms of number of participants), malleability, and the presence of formal agencies and groups associated with […]

To fully understand this emerging paradigm in as­sistive technology, it’s important to recognize how people use virtual world gaming software. Users can fall into any ofthree categories: augmentation — ists, immersionists, or experimentalists (Duran — ske, 2008). All have applications of relevance to people with disabilities. Augmentationists view the virtual world as a means to […]

At first glance, it would appear that online virtual worlds with their emphasis on 3D graphics and complex interface controls have little to offer people with disabilities. On the contrary, virtual worlds serve as a form of augmented reality where users transcend physiological or cognitive chal­lenges to great social and therapeutic benefit. A number of […]

“Models of disability provide a framework for understanding the way in which people with im­pairments experience disability. They also provide a reference for society as laws, regulations and structures are developed that impact on the lives of disabled people. There are two main models that have influenced modern thinking about dis­ability: the medical model and […]