Women entrepreneurs’ negotiation of the work–family balance in patriarchal society

Afreen Huq and Pia Arenius

Journal of Small Business Management, 2025, vol. 63, issue 5, 2188-2219

Abstract: Through the lens of boundary theory, we explore how women entrepreneurs in patriarchal societies display bounded agency through their boundary management strategies when negotiating their roles as entrepreneurs and as wives/mothers. We selected 75 highly educated, urban women entrepreneurs from both traditionally female-dominated and nontraditional sectors who started their businesses at home to explore possible differences in their boundary management strategies. Contrary to the prominent view that the work–family interface is problematic and the work and family domains are incompatible, we find that any conflict arising from the work–family interface disappears when work and family are not understood as separate domains and entrepreneurial work is instead embedded within family life. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis, our findings demonstrate how in a patriarchal society women entrepreneurs’ boundary management strategies, negotiated in a nonconfrontational way in congruence with cultural expectations, ensure that their work boundaries remain permeable while keeping their family role sacrosanct.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/00472778.2024.2424813

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