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The purpose of this paper is to explore and discuss to what extent and why women's entrepreneurship contributes to rural economic viability and gender equality in an advanced welfare state.

The authors use detailed register data to explore men's and women's rural businesses in the most common industries for rural women entrepreneurs in the Swedish welfare state. Based on a literature review, the authors develop hypotheses and analyse how family, business and industry factors influence earnings.

Women's rural entrepreneurship is important for rural viability, as women's businesses provide a wide range of services necessary for life in rural areas. Although women's rural businesses are not significantly smaller than those of men, women's income is lower and more sensitive to business and industry variables. Marriage has positive effects for the earnings of men but negative effects for the earnings of women. The authors argue that the results are contingent on the gendering of entrepreneurship and industries, as well as on the local rural gender contracts. For these reasons, the importance of women entrepreneurs for rural viability is not reflected in their own incomes. Hence, women's rural entrepreneurship does not result in (economic) gender equality.

Entrepreneurship scholars rarely explore women's rural entrepreneurship, and particularly not in the Global North or Western welfare states. Therefore, this empirical study from Sweden provides novel information on how the gender order on the business, industry and family levels influences the income of men and women entrepreneurs differently.

In this paper, women entrepreneurs are seen as leaders and women leaders as entrepreneurial, making both groups an easy target of postfeminist expectations, governed by calls to embody the entrepreneurial self. Acknowledging that the entrepreneurial self has its roots in the universal, rational and autonomous subject, which was shaped in a male form during the Enlightenment, the purpose of this study is to conceptualise feminist resistance as a process through which the autonomous subject can be de-stabilised.

Empirically, this study draws on an extensive research project on women’s rural entrepreneurship that includes 32 in-depth interviews with women entrepreneurs in rural Sweden. This study interpreted expressions of resistance from the women by using an analytical framework the authors developed based on Jonna Bornemark’s philosophical treatise.

Feminist resistance unfolds as an interactive and iterative learning process where the subject recognises their voice, strengthens their voice and beliefs in a relational process and finally sees themselves as a fully fledged actor who finds ways to overcome obstacles that get in their way. Conceptualising resistance as a learning process stands in sharp contrast to the idea of resistance as enacted by the autonomous self.

This study helps researchers to understand that what they may have seen as a sign of weakness among women, is instead a sign of strength: it is a first step in learning resistance that may help women create a life different from that prescribed by the postfeminist discourse. In this way, researchers can avoid reproducing women as “weak and inadequate”.

Through the re-writing of feminist resistance, the masculine entrepreneurship discourse including the notion of the autonomous self is challenged, and a counternarrative to the postfeminist entrepreneurial woman is developed. Theorising resistance as a learning practice enables a more transforming research agenda, making it possible to see women as resisting postfeminist expectations of endless competition with themselves and others.

Contrasting Sweden and Tanzania, this paper aims to explore the experiences of women entrepreneurs affected by entrepreneurialism. This study discusses the impact on their position in society and on their ability to take feminist action.

This paper analysed interviews conducted in the two countries over 15 years, using a holistic perspective on context, including its gendered dimensions.

The results amount to a critique of entrepreneurialism. Women in Sweden did not experience much gain from entrepreneurship, while in Tanzania results were mixed. Entrepreneurialism seems unable to improve the situation for women in the relatively well-functioning economies in the global north, where it was designed.

In mainstream entrepreneurship studies, there is a focus on the institutional context. From the analysis, it is apparent that equal attention must be given to the social and spatial contexts, as they may have severe material and economic consequences for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. The paper raises questions for further studies on the gendering of markets in different contexts, as well as questions on the urban-rural dimension.

In Sweden, marketisation of welfare services led to more women-owned businesses, but the position of women did not improve. The results strongly convey the need for a careful analysis of the pre-existing context, before initiating reforms.

The paper adds to the understanding of context in entrepreneurship studies: Africa is largely an underexplored continent and contrasting North and South is an underexplored methodological approach. This paper further extends and develops the model of gendered contexts developed by Welter et al. (2014).

Policy for women's entrepreneurship is designed to promote economic growth, not least in depleted rural areas, but very little is known about the contributions of rural women entrepreneurs, their needs or how the existing policy is received by them. Using a theoretical framework developed by Korsgaard et al. (2015), the authors analyse how rural women entrepreneurs contribute to rural development and discuss the implications for entrepreneurship policy. This paper aims to focus on the aforementioned objectives.

The authors interviewed 32 women entrepreneurs in rural Sweden representing the variety of businesses in which rural Swedish women are engaged. The authors analysed their contributions to rural development by analysing their motives, strategies and outcomes using Korsgaard et al.’s framework of “entrepreneurship in the rural” and “rural entrepreneurship” as a heuristic, interpretative device.

Irrespective of industry, the respondents were deeply embedded in family and local social structures. Their contributions were substantial, multidimensional and indispensable for rural viability, but the policy tended to bypass most women-owned businesses. Support in terms of business training, counselling and financing are important, but programmes especially for women tend to miss the mark, and so does rural development policy. More important for rural women entrepreneurs in Sweden is the provision of good public services, including for example, schools and social care, that make rural life possible.

Theoretically, the findings question the individualist and a-contextual focus of much entrepreneurship research, as well as the taken-for-granted work–family divide. How gender and how the public and the private are configured varies greatly between contexts and needs contextual assessment. Moreover, the results call for theorising place as an entrepreneurial actor.

Based on the findings, the authors advise future policymakers to gender mainstream entrepreneurship policy and to integrate entrepreneurship and rural development policy with family and welfare state policy.

The paper highlights how rural women respond to policy, and the results are contextualised, making it possible to compare them to other contexts. The authors widen the discussion on contributions beyond economic growth, and the authors show that policy for public and commercial services and infrastructure is indeed also policy for entrepreneurship.

Contrasting two countries with different gender regimes and welfare states, Sweden and Tanzania, this paper aims to analyse how the institutional context affects the ways in which a neo-liberal reform agenda is translated into institutional changes and propose how such changes impact the preconditions for women’s entrepreneurship.

This study uses document analysis and previous studies to describe and analyse the institutions and the institutional changes. This paper uses Scandinavian institutional theory as the interpretative framework.

This study proposes that: in well-developed welfare states with a high level of gender equality, consequences of neo-liberal agenda for the preconditions for women entrepreneurs are more likely to be negative than positive. In less developed states with a low level of gender equality, the gendered consequences of neo-liberal reforms may be mixed and the preconditions for women’s entrepreneurship more positive than negative. How neo-liberalism impacts preconditions for women entrepreneurs depend on the institutional framework in terms of a trustworthy women-friendly state and level of gender equality.

The study calls for bringing the effects on the gender of the neo-liberal primacy of market solutions out of the black box. Studying how women entrepreneurs perceive these effects necessitates qualitative ethnographic data.

This paper demonstrates why any discussion of the impact of political or economic reforms on women’s entrepreneurship must take a country’s specific institutional context into account. Further, previous studies on neo-liberalism have rarely taken an interest in Africa.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a re‐directed and purposeful attention to the design of research on gender and entrepreneurship moving forward.

The paper questions the value of more studies on the men v. women binary and encourages research on the institutions supporting the gendered construction.

The paper suggests a re‐framing of gender (to include men, women, femininity, masculinity, etc.) both in topics investigated and in building the cadre of scholars engaged. It asks for discrimination of gender from biological sex in language use and believes that dialogue will be improved if the word “gender” is maintained as a socially constructed phenomenon directed at distinguishing the norms around “what women do” and “what men do”. Researchers, too, must necessarily confront personal pre‐existing ideas and language shaped by the norms and habits of one's upbringing and daily life in societies that are not acute observers of gender in action.

The paper assesses trends in research on gender and entrepreneurship and recommends ideas regarding new directions to create better research and application in practice, teaching, and training.

In this chapter, the authors argue that entrepreneurship education (EE) as currently conceived, does little to eradicate gender inequality – rather, its focus on the individual and its neglect of structural impediments and measures tend to reinforce this inequality. The authors discuss why this happens and suggest ways forward. The authors believe the most positive action would be to employ legislation and public policy to change gendered structures and practices which would lead to changes in gendered norms. However, the relationship between norms and structures is mutual. Structural change can only be achieved if existing norms are questioned and this should be the first step toward changing discriminatory structures. The authors argue that in this context EE must include norm critical education. The authors provide some practical examples related to the context of EE.

The paper aims to clarify how a gendered analysis of entrepreneurial networks may benefit by the use of a constructionist (post‐structuralist) perspective.

The paper makes use of a discourse analysis: first, the paper reviews a selection of empirical research articles from 1980 to 2008 on gender and networks in entrepreneurship research in order to convey the main research question, the hypotheses, the methodology and the main findings. Second, the paper identifies in a broader literature the hegemonic statements that characterize the discourse of gender and networks.

The main findings of the studies reviewed is that there are no major differences in the networks of female and male entrepreneurs. Research on the significance of gender for entrepreneurial success indicates that there is probably more variation within than between sex categories with regard to network activities. This may be an indication that empiricist feminism and standpoint feminism have outplayed their role as approaches to the study of gender and networks in entrepreneurial settings. The discourse analysis reveals five hegemonic statements: entrepreneurs use social networks strategically, women are disadvantaged compared to men and therefore cannot network effectively, weak ties are the source of men's success; strong ties are women's drawback and, finally, women are inherently relational.

Methodologically, the current status of research on networks, gender and entrepreneurship demonstrates that most of the knowledge is gained through cross‐sectional surveys. Typically, the majority of studies on entrepreneurship, due to the methods chosen, does not allow for first‐hand, real and authentic experiences of entrepreneurial lives. Acknowledging the presence of the speaker can be done in various ways. Entrepreneurs may reveal their thoughts, their experience and reflections only if the relationship between the researcher and the researched is symmetrical. Narrative approaches are suggested in order to “tap” the voice – and thus the stories – of the acting entrepreneurs.

Theoretically, the discourse is limited by the lack of an explicit “gendered” perspective. The analysis of the texts reveals an implicit empiricist feminist approach, resulting in networks and entrepreneurship as well as gender and networks being portrayed in a very special and limited way.

The findings of the discursive approach to research texts on gender and entrepreneurial networks, is that the discourse is limited with regard to both theory and method. This paper has shown that the discourse in the research field is limited, and that the field needs to be challenged by other disciplinary procedures regulating what counts as knowledge.

Informed by socialist feminist theory, the purpose of this paper is to understand the impact of societal factors such as governmental policies, labor market structure, social norms, and gender ideology on the experiences and practices of women small business owners in Sweden.

Using qualitative data gathered during four months of fieldwork in Sweden, the analysis focuses on the case of Malin Andersson, the founder of a domestic services company, to show how individual situations are intimately connected to the larger social, political, and economic environments.

The analysis demonstrates how the complexities of gender and class dynamics interact with business endeavors in a capitalist society with a strong social democratic political system. In particular, the paper shows how Malin Andersson's experience of entrepreneurship is at the nexus of many social forces, creating many contradictions and paradoxes to understanding her experience.

The theoretical framework and empirical evidence suggest that paying attention to the socio‐economic‐political context is vital to illuminate the contradictions inherent, but often overlooked, in women's experience of entrepreneurship in different situations.

While the entrepreneurship and small business research literature has tended to portray women as lesser than men in identifying the differences between them, little research has looked at how gender is construed in business ownership. The purpose of this paper is to provide a new focus, examining how male and female business owners construe each other.

The research employs George Kelly's personal construct theory and repertory grids to examine the constructs associated with male and female business owners.

It is found that there are many constructs used to describe business owners and, counter to predictions from some of the literature review, few differences between the way in which male and female business owners are construed. The paper offers explanations as to why so few differences are found.

The sample is limited to just one area of Britain and the businesses had all been established in the last three years. This will influence the generalizability of the findings.

This paper is able to offer research evidence to demonstrate that male and female business owners do not construe male and female business owners differently.