Gender Differences in Entrepreneurs' Perceived Problems, Profits and Plans‪.‬

INTRODUCTION Small businesses are important to the economy of almost every country, but life for entrepreneurs can often turn out to be full of difficulties during the first critical years, with many discontinuing their businesses or at least failing to thrive and grow (Audretsch, 1995; Chaganti & Chaganti, 2009). In order to take a closer look at the situation faced by the owners of young firms, this study looks at the problems, profit levels and future plans reported by European business owners who started their businesses in 2002 and were still personally operating them in 2005. The overall averages as well as the averages for men and women are compared, and then those variables for which there were fairly large gender differences are further examined for each of the ten countries included in the study. The following section provides a brief background on business performance in small business and the problems entrepreneurs often face. The results of this study on European business owners are then presented.