Entreprenörskapets tysta(de) röster : En narrativ studie om kvinnor som delar sitt liv med en man som är entreprenör

Sammanfattning: Entrepreneurship has come to play a crucial role in developing our society, as has gender equality. However, some conflicting aspects of these two political priorities have to date been overlooked. Taking its point of departure in feminist theory, an entrepreneurial culture and an empirical context supporting companies with high growth potential, this thesis aims to illuminate and analyze narrative constructions of entrepreneurship and gender in relation to the female spouse or partner (S/P) of a male entrepreneur. This means entrepreneurship is studied from a gender perspective and gender from the perspective of entrepreneurship. Reading into a broad literature within the field of entrepreneurship, the epistemology appears to be permeated by a masculine rationality, not least is this disclosed in the field of gender studies on entrepreneurship. This excludes, and silences, the voices and practices of the entrepreneur’s S/P, which is questioned in this thesis by using the metaphor of a hunter-gatherer society.The thesis builds on a narrative method, analyzing the entrepreneurship policy’s normative story of entrepreneurship in parallel to the female S/P’s narratives and experiences of her entrepreneurial journey. The normative narrative includes certain assumptions about entrepreneurship, women and business. One is that entrepreneurial practice takes part in the public sphere. Another that entrepreneurship is practiced by the entrepreneur. A third that equality is only seen to be achieved between women and men who run a business. Understanding policy as a cultural product, constructed by contemporary norms and values, that govern our lives in its broadest sense, these assumptions do not only hide certain silences. They also bear implications for the lives we can live.In order to illustrate and problematize how our lives can be lived, the S/P’s narratives are analyzed and the implications unfolded. These narratives demonstrate how the women, by means of economic and social support, enable the start-up and development of entrepreneurial business by adopting a more traditional role. The fact that women have a more traditional role than men may not be noteworthy. The remarkable thing is rather that men – with the support of the state and women – can build companies where women’s efforts and conditions are discounted, while the reforms that aim to support economic growth and gender equality leave this unproblematized. In order to make their voices heard, these women tend to imitate and reproduce an entrepreneurial and masculine rationale when making sense of their experiences. This, in turn, further silences the experiences of S/Ps whose voices and practices are rendered even more suppressed.By mirroring the normative and parallel narratives, six different constructions of entrepreneurship and gender emerge. At first, the S/P’s invisible participation trains a skilled imitator when positioning herself as entrepreneurial. Secondly, the conditional equality of the policy reform relates to a double subordination in relation to the man and the entrepreneur, who are both superior to the female S/P. Thirdly, equality and economic growth appear to be two incompatible concepts, which can be illustrated by the assumption that a co-ownership requires an active role in the business. This holds a structural discrimination, leaving the role of the majority of women in an entrepreneurial context unacknowledged, both with regards to theory and practice.