Title: Female entrepreneurship as rupture: becoming a female entrepreneur in Sweden in neoliberal times

Authors: Gabriele Griffin; Anneli Häyrén

Addresses: Centre for Gender Research, Uppsala University, Box 527, 75120 Uppsala, Sweden ' Centre for Gender Research, Uppsala University, Box 527, 75120 Uppsala, Sweden

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.

DOI: 10.1504/IJESB.2022.122022

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 2022 Vol.45 No.3, pp.300 - 313

Received: 22 Feb 2019
Accepted: 15 May 2019

Published online: 08 Apr 2022 *

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