Postfeminism, hybrid mumpreneur identities and the reproduction of masculine entrepreneurship

Abstract

Mobilising postfeminism as an analytical device, this article re-examines how women business owners discursively engage with the identity of the mumpreneur. Drawing on interviews with women business owners, this article reconceptualises the compatibility between motherhood and entrepreneurship associated with the mumpreneur, in terms of a hybrid identity that interlinks feminine and masculine behaviours connected to home and work. Study data reveal the discursive practices present in interview accounts – choosing family and work, strategic mumpreneurship and enhancing the business without limits – which draw on postfeminist discourses to constitute hybrid entrepreneurial femininities associated with the mumpreneur category. The article contributes to the gender and entrepreneurship literature, in particular, the scholarship on mumpreneurship, by first, showing how engagement with the mumpreneur identity is implicated in the reproduction of masculine entrepreneurship; second, demonstrates how encounters with the mumpreneur contribute to the creation of a hierarchy of entrepreneurial identities which reinforces the masculine norm; and third considers how the mumpreneur as a hybrid identity mobilises entrepreneurship in children in gendered ways. While the emergence of the mumpreneur as a contemporary entrepreneurial identity has positively impacted how women’s entrepreneurship is viewed, the study demonstrates that it has not disrupted dominant discourses of masculine entrepreneurship or gendered power relations in the entrepreneurial field.

Tracing networked images of gendered entrepreneurship online

“…Concern with female performance of appropriate femininity, characterized by modesty and neatness at work (Mavin & Grandy, 2019), has been accompanied by increasing attention toward male performances of masculinity (Giazitzoglu & Down, 2017). Such research has largely addressed confident masculinities and bounded femininities (Lewis et al., 2022) as socially constructed, dynamic, and always located within society (Rumens, 2017). Research converges in its analysis of men doing normative, or “un‐doing”, masculinized practices (Kelan, 2018), and examining how particular masculinities become socially valued and how they can be accomplished (or not) by both men and women.…”

“…Much research has unpacked these norms; exploring how individuals align, resist, or renegotiate gender identities in different contexts. While the potential of “simultaneous and multiple enactments of masculinities and femininities” (Patterson et al., 2012, p.691) is acknowledged, explorations of complexity remain rare yet are critical to our explication of gendering in relation to contemporary entrepreneurship (Lewis et al., 2022). Recognizing concerns arising from this empirical lacuna, our research contributes to theoretical development in proposing how connected networks of images shape understandings of the gendered entrepreneur.…”

“…Yet the ways in which gendered assumptions are visually replicated in this production of normative entrepreneurial actors remains underexplored (Marlow & Martinez Dy, 2018), particularly across online spaces. Nevertheless, as we explore further below, research has usefully progressed understandings of the visual in entrepreneurship, principally in relation to postfeminist aesthetics (Swan, 2017); situated both femininity and masculinity as relevant to female entrepreneurs (Lewis et al., 2022) and broadened the range of contexts under consideration (Ahl & Marlow, 2018). However, despite recent examinations of visual representations (Banet‐Weiser, 2018; Pritchard et al., 2019; Smith, 2021; Swan, 2017), there is a need for further research which attends to both entrepreneurial masculinities and femininities (Marlow & Martinez Dy, 2018) while reflecting contemporary concerns with imagery online (Aiello & Parry, 2020).…”

Exploring kin and family support to young firms in Ethiopia

“…Women entrepreneurs at different family roles face challenges of work-family conflict and personality differences (Panda, 2018). "Mumpreneur" is studied as the intersection of entrepreneurship and motherhood (Lewis et al, 2021). Interestingly, the duration of the paternity leave taken by their partners is the most important and primary determinant of such entrepreneurship (Naldi et al, 2019).…”

“…Women entrepreneurs at different family roles face challenges of work–family conflict and personality differences (Panda, 2018). “Mumpreneur” is studied as the intersection of entrepreneurship and motherhood (Lewis et al. , 2021).…”