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This paper explores the ways women entrepreneurs in male-dominated industries do identity work in order to gain legitimacy. In particular, we consider such identity work as a process being prompted by their direct environment, while demonstrating the gendered structural power relations in these women’s entrepreneurial contexts. We use a postfeminist lens to show how, in their quest for more legitimacy, they seem to be interpellated by postfeminist discourse.

We have used a narrative approach to show how women entrepreneurs in masculinised contexts do identity work to acquire legitimacy, and moreover use a postfeminist perspective to reflect on this identity work as to demonstrate how these Dutch businesswomen consider their agency in specific feminist terms within these men-dominated industry environments.

We present empirical data of ten women entrepreneurs in the Netherlands and how they discursively and subjectively make sense of their surrounding gendered contexts, in order to illustrate how local gender regimes and individual actions may conspire to constrain as well as stimulate these women’s entrepreneurship. By reflecting on three different ways of identity work through a postfeminist lens, we show how these women are interpellated by postfeminist discourses when trying to gain legitimacy.

The rather small sample does not allow us to generalise our findings to the whole population of women entrepreneurs in men-dominated contexts, yet this was not our goal anyway.

Such a reflection might help policy makers and such women themselves realise how, after all, gender inequality is still persistant in the entrepreneurship field and drawing on postfeminism does not necessarily help to support these women entrepreneurs' work–life balance.

Our findings underline the importance of a more gender inclusive entrepreneurship ecosystem, in which women entrepreneurs in both masculinised ánd feminised sectors are seen and treated as legitimate entrepreneurs.

Postfeminism, to our knowledge, has hardly been applied to women entrepreneurs' experiences in men-dominated environments, and is in itself still a rather new field in entrepreneurship studies.

With the rise of esports, research on the perceived fit between esports sponsors and events remains limited. This study uses the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) to investigate how the perceived fit between sponsors and esports events effects brand awareness, consumer attitudes and purchasing behavior, aiming to offer insights for more effective marketing strategies.

Data were collected from 245 participants during the Taipei Game Show 2024, using purposive sampling of individuals aged 18 and above. The data were analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with Smart PLS 4.0.1.6 to examine the relationships among perceived fit, brand awareness, consumer attitudes and purchasing behavior, and to investigate the mediating effects.

The results discovered that brand awareness, perceived fit and consumer attitudes had significant positive effects on purchasing behavior, explaining 75% of its variance. Additionally, perceived fit positively affected both brand awareness and consumer attitude. Mediating effect showed that both brand awareness and consumer attitude play significant mediating roles between perceived fit and purchasing behavior, with consumer attitude having a stronger mediating effect.

This study highlights to the limited body of research on esports sponsorships by demonstrating that perceived sponsor-event fit is crucial for enhancing brand awareness, advancing positive consumer attitudes and driving purchasing behavior. The ELM framework highlights the importance of central and peripheral routes in influencing consumer decisions, offering strategies for companies to optimize sponsorship effectiveness and improve brand competitiveness.