Staff Thesis 38 views
Does Entrepreneurship Pay for Women? A social positioning investigation of entrepreneurial rewards.
Sarah Marks
Swansea University Author: Sarah Marks
Abstract
Although entrepreneurship is widely promoted as a means of fulfilling personal and economic aspirations and avoiding gendered labour market discrimination, the nature and extent of entrepreneurial rewards for women, and whether all women benefit, are seldom empirically researched. In particular, ver...
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| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa67629 |
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| Abstract: |
Although entrepreneurship is widely promoted as a means of fulfilling personal and economic aspirations and avoiding gendered labour market discrimination, the nature and extent of entrepreneurial rewards for women, and whether all women benefit, are seldom empirically researched. In particular, very little is known about women’s entrepreneurial incomes, or how, why, and in what contexts they are subjectively evaluated as satisfactory. To address this issue, the thesis investigates the relationship between women entrepreneur’s social position and subjectively beneficial outcomes emerging from venture creation. Informed by critical, feminist and Bourdieusian perspectives, it employs an abductive thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 52 women entrepreneurs purposefully selected to reflect different intersections of class, race and life course. Through an intersectional social positioning framework, it investigates the following question: “How do women from diverse social backgrounds experience entrepreneurship and its outcomes?” More specifically, it seeks understanding of how classed, gendered and racialised experiences of social position make entrepreneurship “worth it”. The ensuing abductive analysis provides comprehensive and nuanced insight on women’s entrepreneurial outcomes, including incomes, and a detailed analysis of women’s feelings about those outcomes in relation to social position. In contrast to much of the extant literature, the study finds that most women entrepreneurs have very strong pecuniary motivations. Non-monetary rewards do not fully compensate for poor remuneration and the main reason respondents give up their business is due to inadequate financial returns. Breadwinning and securing transgenerational benefits are key and low remuneration entrepreneurship is subsidised by a much wider range of household income streams than the current literature suggests. The study introduces novel concepts that extend theoretical understanding of women’s differentiated experiences of entrepreneurship including the malcontented female entrepreneur, narrative demonetisation, cognitive bookkeeping and new classifications of non-pecuniary rewards and social positioning goals. In showing how both outcomes and their subjective evaluation are socially embedded this thesis contributes to critical entrepreneurship scholarship and lays the groundwork for a future social theory of entrepreneurial satisfaction. |
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| Funders: |
Economic and Social Research Council |