Introductory paragraph: In Sweden, a growing number of mothers are starting a new venture when their children are young. This is surprising in a country where the welfare system with its family policies favors employees, not entrepreneurs. Because the Scandinavian welfare systems promote employment over entrepreneurship, we were were curious why so many mothers of young children still choose to launch ventures of their own.

Principal TopicExtant literature presents the combination of entrepreneurship and motherhood as a difficult and conflict-ridden one, requiring the adaptation of the business to the family situation. To investigate the relation, we build on the literatures on motherhood (Bueskens, 2018; Smyth, 2012) and women’s entrepreneurship and take the post-structuralist perspective of the self as discursively constructed (Bruner, 1990) and requiring subject positioning, and negotiating  (Czarniawska, 2013). 

MethodUsing qualitative interviews with 15 women entrepreneurs we explore how women position themselves simultaneously as good mothers and good entrepreneurs. We analyze the collected material via thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The context is Sweden, which is characterized by a strong gender equality ideology and by generous family policies including 18 months paid parental leave and affordable daycare from age 1.

ResultsWe find that women engage in doing and undoing motherhood. The undoing includes renegotiating their positions vis-à-vis societal norms and expectations that a woman must prioritize her child above all. The doing includes constructing a new discourse in which a happy mother is one who is able to pursue her passions and realize her dreams and in so doing models desirable attitudes and values in life for her child. We find that entrepreneurship can be a vehicle for crafting this identity.

We also find that mothers engage in undoing of the “mumpreneurship” discourse according to which women engage in entrepreneurship as a flexible form of part-time job that allows them to harmonize work and family responsibilities. Rather, these women engage in full-time, income-generating ventures motivated by a genuine desire to seize promising business opportunities. As such, our findings confront the prevailing misconception that businesses initiated by mothers are primarily geared toward convenience and exhibit lower economic ambition. These mothers are equally committed, driven, and dedicated to achieving success in their businesses as anyone else in the entrepreneurship landscape. Our findings have important policy implications in that they call for a reevaluation of the potential economic contribution of mother entrepreneurs.

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.

This article explores why an increasing number of Swedish mothers are becoming entrepreneurs; this choice appears counterintuitive given the prevailing social welfare system prioritizes the rights of employed women. Using an interpretative stance, we analyzed the life stories of 18 Swedish mothers who created new ventures while caring for young children. The value of the time afforded by parental leave policies was identified as vital to the business creation process. Hence, we argue that time is a critical entrepreneurship-relevant resource; this is illustrated by the positive effect of the Swedish welfare system upon entrepreneurship entry and the timing of this decision.

In this research, we ask why and how some women start or grow a business after initiating divorce, while others will not. Grounded on an in-depth study of 24 women who experienced divorce in a patriarchal society, we develop a framework that identifies two pathways. The first pathway is followed by those women who felt trapped in their marriage and engaged in entrepreneurial activities as part of an overall process of self-discovery and self-development that enabled them to search for and find new sources of meanings, while the second pathway is followed by those women who felt discontent with their marriage, remarried but did not engage in entrepreneurship. Our emergent theoretical framework explains the importance of entrepreneurship to attain eudaimonic well-being following an adversity, thereby expanding the scope of entrepreneurship research.

Using data on all businesses started by mothers of young children in Sweden between 2000 and 2014, we explore which factors are associated with entrepreneurship among mothers. We find that being unemployed or being an immigrant is positively associated with business start-up by mothers; however, our findings show that what matters more is the paternity leave taken by the mothers’ partners. These findings suggest that in institutional contexts such as Sweden, gender inequality is not a persistent feature of most households and that women can make career choices by negotiating with their partners who will make use of the parental benefits offered by the government.

A notable phenomenon in the Gulf States, and in Bahrain in particular, is the increasing number of female-led family ventures. This phenomenon is surprising because women are reported to face many legitimacy challenges when establishing a family business in an Arab society, in which social and economic decisions are male-dominated. Thus, we explore how female-led family ventures gain legitimacy in an Arab society. We employ a multiple case-study approach to investigate three longitudinal cases. We develop a process model of legitimacy formation for female-led family ventures. The legitimacy formation consists of three main phases: individual legitimacy, market validity and royal validity. Our model suggests that meritocracy carves out and informs most decisions and activities throughout the phases of the legitimacy formation. Additionally, we identify four different interconnecting forces (family/business spillover, large voices, bargaining power and influence on family norms) that, if present, accelerate the legitimacy formation. Our analysis also suggests that there are interactions and reciprocal relationships among the founders and the people with whom they interact that can both influence and be influenced by the process of legitimacy formation.