Determining the regional distribution of women entrepreneurship using the geographical information systems and mapping method: A case study of Eskisehir

The importance of women entrepreneurship in global socioeconomic development is a well-known phenomenon all over the world. Especially in the 1980s, and influenced by liberalism, many studies, research work and regulatory changes were made both in the academic and political fields regarding the development and the support for women entrepreneurship in countries like the United States, England and Canada, a practice which later spread to other countries. From then, the perception that a business could only be established and operated by men gradually began to disappear. However, despite efforts to increase the social status of women in our country being initiated in the 19th century, the idea of institutionalization and development of women's entrepreneurship in the modern sense was considered with towards the end of the 1990s. The aim of this study was to determine the regional distribution of women entrepreneurship by sectors and to examine the characteristic features of women entrepreneurship in the literature. For this purpose, an entrepreneurship map of female entrepreneurs operating in Odunpazarı and Tepebaşı central districts of Eskişehir was created using the Geographical Information Systems mapping method. In this regard, 33 sectors were considered, and a separate regional distribution was determined for each, and the sectors and regions that were generally preferred by the women entrepreneurs identified. Keywords: Women Entrepreneurship, Geographical Information Systems, Entrepreneurship Map