This article discusses how female entrepreneurs of Moroccan and Turkish origin in the Netherlands construct their ethnic, gender and entrepreneurial identities in relation to their Muslim identity. We contribute to theory development on the interrelationship of work identities with gender, ethnicity and religion through an intersectional analysis of these women's gender and ethnic identities within their entrepreneurial contexts and in relation to their Muslim identity. We draw on four narratives to illustrate how the women interviewed perform creative boundary work at these hitherto under-researched intersections. Islam is employed as a boundary to let religious norms and values prevail over cultural ones and to make space for individualism, honour and entrepreneurship. Moreover, different individual religious identities are crafted to stretch the boundaries of what is allowed for female entrepreneurs in order to resist traditional, dogmatic interpretations of Islam. Our study contributes to studies on entrepreneurship by showing how these female entrepreneurs gain agency at the crossroads of gender, ethnicity and religion.
This paper explores the complex processes of identity construction of female ethnic minority entrepreneurs. Informed by discursive approaches to identity, we make an intersectional analysis of five life stories of female entrepreneurs of Moroccan or Turkish origin in the Netherlands. Being female, Turkish or Moroccan, and entrepreneur at the same time requires various strategies to negotiate identities with different constituencies. These strategies of identity work vary in the degree of conformity: one type is to mainly adhere to conventional images of femininity, a second one is to denounce femininity and/or ethnicity situationally, and the third is to resist the masculine connotation of entrepreneurship by disconnecting it from masculinity. Our focus on this hitherto neglected group of entrepreneurs makes for a situated contribution to the deconstruction of the entrepreneurial archetype of the white male hero. It furthers the understanding of the micropolitics of identity construction in the workplace in relation to the social categories of gender, ethnicity and entrepreneurship.
This paper explores the complex processes of identity construction of female ethnic minority entrepreneurs. Informed by discursive approaches to identity, we make an intersectional analysis of five life stories of female entrepreneurs of Moroccan or Turkish origin in the Netherlands. Being female, Turkish or Moroccan, and entrepreneur at the same time requires various strategies to negotiate identities with different constituencies. These strategies of identity work vary in the degree of conformity: one type is to mainly adhere to conventional images of femininity, a second one is to denounce femininity and/or ethnicity situationally, and the third is to resist the masculine connotation of entrepreneurship by disconnecting it from masculinity. Our focus on this hitherto neglected group of entrepreneurs makes for a situated contribution to the deconstruction of the entrepreneurial archetype of the white male hero. It furthers the understanding of the micropolitics of identity construction in the workplace in relation to the social categories of gender, ethnicity and entrepreneurship.
Building on theories of intersectionality, in this article we develop the concept of female ethnicity in order to understand the meanings of femininity for Muslim immigrant businesswomen in the context of entrepreneurship. Through the notion of female ethnicity we analyse four life stories and illustrate the tensions these women encounter because of the interlaced working of gender and ethnicity as social categories of exclusion. In addition, we highlight the strategies that they develop in order to cope with these tensions. These analyses, we argue, contribute to conceptualizations of entrepreneurship that do justice to complex and contradictory processes of identity constructions.
… unsignificantly off the coast there was a splash quite unnoticed it was Icarus drowning.
William Carlos Williams (1962)
Why 'critical perspectives' on entrepreneurship research?In the face of the extraordinary events of the late 2000s 'global financial crisis', it may have been expected that some drastic rethink of the unquestioning idealization of the entrepreneur as prototype 'homo economicus', all aspirational and risk-taking would flood the world's media and preoccupy social commentators. One might have expected social, political and business media to pursue empirical research and theoretical analyses seeking out new forms of financial and organizational life to militate against the obscenely unequal, grossly exploitative and boom-crash ethos of market economics. It could equally have been imagined that newly awakened 'captains of industry' would
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