Women of wine in Sicily: analysis of their role, motivation and work

Abstract

Recent surveys on female employment show that, in Italy, the number of Women Entrepreneurs has constantly increased. This work aims to study the "Women of Wine" in Sicily, those entrepreneurs or managers who hold leadership and decision-making roles within the wineries, focusing on age, qualification, type of activity, motivations that led to undertake the task, difficulties encountered, and also on changes made by women in the firm. By calculating the coefficient of contingency we intended to measure the association between some factors of development of women-run wineries in Sicily, namely between professional characteristics of women managers deemed most important for this investigation, and some characteristics of firms. By the analysis of results we observed that the wine firms with women at managerial levels are real positive, innovative and growing business, that can open new and better development prospects for this sector.