SMEs play a very strategic role in national economy from its contribution to improving gross domestic product, labor absorption, to improving national export and investment. The increase of SME numbers is expected to achieve the national target by growing 2% of total employers becoming the key to a state’s advance. Data shows that more than 60% of SME actors are women, and this number increases continuously by 8% over year. On the other hand, the society’s assumption that entrepreneurship is better occupied by men is correlated to masculine concept in which the characteristics of employers are very inherent to this concept. The increased women participation in SMEs is not recognized directly by the society. It is because of women’s dual role as mother and the basic pattern of women entrepreneurship is represented as the form of struggle for balancing the work and the domestic responsibility. The increased women role as the owner of SMEs sufficiently proves that women should play not only feminine role such as taking care of children, cooking and doing other house chores. The establishment of women employer communities is a means of developing women’s potency in learning their business. This research aimed to explain the women’s entrepreneurship perspective in SMEs using feminism attribute in the women leadership characteristics. Thus this research could contributed to providing gender consciousness to prepare an idea of how a woman leads her business appropriately thereby can balance her role in family and her role as the leader in SME she leads. The method employed was literature study, using inter-theories comparative analysis and metaanalysis. The result of research showed that the women can show their role corresponding to the situation they face. When performing as the leader of SME, woman had characteristics different from those in feminism theory. She could be a transformational, participatory, action-oriented, creative and problem solver leader. Government’s support in the term of women empowerment in SME was expected to benefit and to motivate other women to be successful in entrepreneurship.
Keywords: leadership, feminism, entrepreneurship, micro small medium enterprises
