Women's entrepreneurial subjectivity under scrutiny: Expert knowledge on gender and entrepreneurship

Abstract

In recent years, entrepreneurship has become a guiding principle of the thinkable, not just in economy, but also justice. Boosting entrepreneurship among women is a manifestation of this project, which a-problematically links the call for equality with the activation of the economy. The standpoint usually taken in scientific and political debates assumes that, in the case of women, there is an incompatibility between gender norms and entrepreneurial subjectivity. Considering the performative nature of knowledge production, this article analyses how gender is (un)done through the problematization of women's entrepreneurial subjectivity by expert knowledge. To do so, it reviews a sample of the scientific literature of the past 10 years focused on the complex relations in place throughout these regulatory spaces. The authors identify three types of approaches (women facing entrepreneurship, the gender of entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurship of gender) and discuss the prevailing normative assumptions, as well as the political implications, through a gender and feminist lens.