Female entrepreneurship in the wine sector: the role of family and identity in Italian small and medium wineries strategies

The current chapter aims at answering the following research questions: what are the paths followed by women in founding or managing the generational passage in wineries? How are they mobilizing providers of valuable resources - capital, labor, intangibles - to project their firms along paths of growth? The inductive study is based on a sample of wineries located in the North-East of Italy selected from the national list of members of the Association of Women in Wine. Based on a multiple case study and involving both new and extant firms, the chapter proffers a stylized description of the factors and strategies allowing female firms to subvert the typical logics of male-dominated fields. It proffers a micro-analysis of how entrepreneuring might be conceived as emancipation for women, exposing an account of the everyday activities and the attitudes and postures that guide females who happen to lead a firm. It works at the intersection between women entrepreneurship and family business, since the wine industry is one wherein the control of firms by women depends on generational handovers.