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This article focuses on the way in which women entrepreneurs legitimate their place in a gendered economy by reifying a divide between ‘real work’ and ‘not‐real work’. Using ethnographic approaches to follow the everyday lives of several women who own and operate small businesses in the USA, our article documents three gendering practices the women use for ‘becoming real workers:’ embodied, spatial and temporal. The study shows that women entrepreneurs become ‘productive workers’ by recasting reproductive work as non‐productive or not‐real work. At the end, we explore two possible alternative conceptualizations of ‘work’ that could contribute to dissolving this gendered divide.

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Purpose -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. Design/methodology/approach -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. Findings -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. Originality/value -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.

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