Gender and Entrepreneurship as An Intertwined Social Practice: Narratives of A Learning Trajectory

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to illustrate how doing gender and doing entrepreneurship form a single intertwined social practice. It is based on an empirical analysis of women’s narratives about their becoming entrepreneurs. Five plots are identified: the women who positioned themselves as the creators of their businesses; those who define themselves as artists, those who assumed a position of co-author; those who described themselves as a ‘responsible wife’; those who defined themselves as belonging to the second generation. In fact becoming a woman entrepreneur implies a process of learning and enacting behaviors, discourses and competent participation in a local community. The narratives of becoming a woman entrepreneur are analyzed in relation to two dimensions: temporality and accountability.