 Female entrepreneurship as rupture: becoming a female entrepreneur in Sweden in neoliberal timesGabriele Griffin and Anneli Häyrén International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 2022, vol. 45, issue 3, 300-313 Abstract: Neoliberal economies have fostered entrepreneurship through the restructuring and reduction of public sector employment, an emphasis on individual agency, and on becoming entrepreneur as a processual project of self. Female entrepreneurship as a situated phenomenon takes particular forms in this context. Drawing on empirical research on female entrepreneurs in Sweden, we suggest that becoming entrepreneur for our interviewees involves agency as a reaction formation to five phenomena: organisational restructuring processes, work conflicts in previous employment, sickness, family issues, and a view of life as a differently worked and lived project than encapsulated in conventional employment. Entrepreneuring here becomes rupture but also engagement with new entrepreneurial support structures, in this instance an all-female co-working hub. We challenge certain core assumptions about entrepreneurship, in particular the notion of entrepreneurs as young and solely future- and goal-oriented. Keywords: female entrepreneur; mid-life entrepreneur; reaction formation; neoliberalism; work life cycle; entrepreneuring as rupture. (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ids:ijesbu:v:45:y:2022:i:3:p:300-313 Access Statistics for this article More articles in International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd |
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