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Gender and social entrepreneurship in turbulent waters: developing a gender-aware conceptual framework

Persephone de Magdalene (Independent Researcher, Northland, New Zealand)
Kai Roland Green (School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark)

International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship

ISSN: 1756-6266

Article publication date: 6 November 2024

96

Abstract

Purpose

This paper identifies and maps themes and critiques emerging from feminist-informed and gender-focused mainstream entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship (SE) literature. We aim to develop a robust, theoretically informed gender-aware framework for future SE research.

Design/methodology/approach

A five-stage literature review process was undertaken to identify the common themes, key knowledge gaps and areas of contention highlighted by feminist critiques of mainstream entrepreneurship and what we refer to here as the “critical SE literature”. We draw on a widely used framework of epistemological approaches to discuss the emergent themes, specifically utilising three dominant epistemologies previously found to map onto entrepreneurship policy, those being: “gender as variable”, feminist standpoint and feminist poststructuralist positions.

Findings

We find feminist perspectives on SE particularly distinctive for their high reliance on relational and embedded accounts of the economy, more attentive to collectivist themes like “belongingness” in the performance of gender and identity, and maintaining a challenge to neoliberal and postfeminist norms. Anchoring each perspective in their respective epistemologies, we demonstrate their lineage in critiques of mainstream entrepreneurship and critical (non-feminist) SE. However, divergences from these lineages lead us to identify diversely contextualised and value-adding feminist accounts of SE that add richness and nuance to mainstream entrepreneurship theorising.

Research limitations/implications

The relative “youth” of the gender-focused and feminist-informed SE literature, alongside the theoretical relevance of the feminist critique of mainstream entrepreneurship and critical social entrepreneurship literature, lead us to draw on the strengths of a more interpretivist paradigm in our research. This amplifies our ability to support the revelation of conceptual connections and relationships between emergent themes, theories, epistemologies and approaches drawn from multidisciplinary sources and to thereby enhance the reach, and associated value, of our research findings.

Originality/value

This review responds to calls for a gender-aware framework for social entrepreneurship research by (1) developing a set of original emergent themes, (2) tracing their intellectual lineage in associated research fields and (3) using them to deepen the connection between feminist epistemologies and entrepreneurship concepts.

Keywords

Citation

de Magdalene, P. and Green, K.R. (2024), "Gender and social entrepreneurship in turbulent waters: developing a gender-aware conceptual framework", International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJGE-02-2024-0064

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2024, Emerald Publishing Limited

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