Exploring the false promise of entrepreneurship through a postfeminist critique of the enterprise policy discourse in Sweden and the UK

Introduction

Within the contemporary neoliberal turn, market logics have infiltrated human subjectivity emphasising self-governance and the enactment of an entrepreneurial self to exploit personal potential and so assume responsibility for social, economic and welfare needs (Couldry, 2010; Marttila, 2013; Rose, 1993). As such, contemporary articulations of neoliberalism and entrepreneurialism are conjoined; the foundational neoliberal market logic ‘releases’ the individual to exploit their potential through an entrepreneurial way of being. These constructs intertwine to inform a hegemonic sensibility that affords individuals the responsibility to take advantage of market opportunities becoming what Gill (2017: 608) describes as ‘a central organising ethic of society’. The pervasiveness of this discourse has reached into debates exploring contemporary analyses of women’s position in society suggesting we have entered a postfeminist era (Gill, 2007; Rottenberg, 2014). While there are varied and contested iterations of postfeminism (Gill and Scharff, 2013), the underpinning thesis suggests that in the light of female emancipation and the contemporary emphasis upon the individual, notions of collective subordination are socially redundant and dysfunctional to market operation (Lewis et al., 2018). While postfeminism reaches back to some aspects of established feminist argument, such as the ambition to realise women’s potential and address subordinating influences, it is argued that the pathway to achieving these ambitions is through the individual negotiation of gendered constraints (Braithwaite, 2002; Showden, 2009).

Although postfeminism occupies its own distinct space, it calls upon ‘the grammar of neoliberalism’ (Gill, 2017) emphasising individuality, self-governance and entrepreneurialism (Gill, 2017; Lewis et al., 2018; McRobbie, 2009). The manner in which neoliberalism and entrepreneurialism shape contemporary articulations of postfeminism has to date, largely been explored through an illustrative focus upon cultural tropes (Adriaens and Van Bauwel, 2014; Showden, 2009). This focus is now expanding to explore, for example, how postfeminist assumptions are shaping management and organisation studies, the austerity agenda and entrepreneurship (Lewis, 2014; Lewis et al., 2018; Orgad and De Benedictis, 2015; Sullivan and Delaney, 2017). To advance this debate, we critically analyse how postfeminist assumptions have shaped government policy initiatives aimed at expanding women’s entrepreneurship and the assumptions underpinning such initiatives.

Evaluating how policy initiatives are constructed is critical as they represent a political ideological articulation of prevailing normative socio-economic values (Bennett, 2014), not least in regard to gender. In order to enable a nuanced analysis, we draw upon two differing sites – the UK, a liberal welfare state, and Sweden, a social-democratic welfare state (Esping-Andersen, 1990), that differ in gender equality policy. Focusing upon these two cases enables us to reflect how, within these differing contexts, neoliberalism has been absorbed into policy initiatives and articulated through postfeminist exhortations for women to engage with entrepreneurship. We commence by introducing our analytical framing and outlining dimensions of postfeminism; we then outline our material and method. This is followed by an exploration of policy for women’s entrepreneurship in the Swedish and UK context. We then consider the implications of postfeminist assumptions reflected in policy and finally, we conclude by questioning the capacity of entrepreneurship to fuel a postfeminist future whereby women can claim new pathways to personal emancipation.

Neoliberalism, entrepreneurialism and postfeminism

Couldry (2010) traces neoliberalism back to its roots within an economic theory of market functioning developed in the 1920s, noting that within its contemporary iteration, however, this market logic has expanded into all other institutional and personal forms of governance. Within this iteration, neoliberalism infuses ways of being and understanding throughout society that ‘upholds the individual as responsible for their own social and economic status’ (De Benedictis and Gill, 2016: 2). As such, contemporary neoliberalism constructs a new, agentic citizen who, having absorbed the individualised market logic of neoliberalism as a normative way of being (Couldry, 2010; Jessop, 2002) embraces ‘self-governmentality’ (Rose, 1993). Consequently, the contemporary articulation of neoliberalism transcends the original market logic to create a neoliberal, entrepreneurial subject. One illustration of the confluence of such market and subject logics is the expansion of substantive entrepreneurship, in the guise of self-employment and new venture creation, as the enactment of the neoliberal subject. Entrepreneurship corrals agency, self-efficacy and opportunity seeking together as individuals enact their entrepreneurial potential through self-employment and new venture creation and in so doing, create their own employment and also generate new jobs.

Neoliberalism and entrepreneurialism are discrete but intertwined discourses separate from, but related to, the foundational debates informing postfeminism, which in itself has no clear and definitive definition. Recent work in organisations studies (Lewis, 2018; Lewis et al., 2017, 2018) has converged around the foundational work of Gill (2007) and McRobbie (2004, 2009) who argue that postfeminism should be regarded as a distinct cultural sensibility, comprising of a number of distinct but interrelated themes. A text, image or narrative may be characterised as postfeminist if it includes one, or more, of the following features – defines femininity as a bodily property and revives notions of natural sexual difference; marks a shift from sex object to desiring sexual subject; encourages self-surveillance and self-discipline and a makeover paradigm; promotes consumerism and the commodification of difference; emphasises individualism, choice and empowerment as the primary routes to women’s independence and freedom; and implies that gender equality has been achieved and feminist activism is, thus, no longer necessary (Gill, 2007). Lewis (2014) adds a further point, the retreat to home as a matter of choice, not obligation. Successful liberated independent working women are celebrated as those who have effectively used their agency to negotiate the complexities of contemporary society to take advantage of the opportunities offered.

Deconstructing this portrayal reveals a dominant imagery of youthful, heterosexual, conventionally attractive, confident educated women living and working within advanced economies. Maintaining this image requires a constant critical gaze on the self to ensure the subject being reflects such norms to conform as a successful postfeminist woman. So, while postfeminism celebrates women’s achievements and emancipation, it also reinforces a traditional reproduction of femininity – but with a twist; women are portrayed as having choice but are freely, willingly and proudly choosing to enact traditional femininity (Lewis et al., 2018). Thus, postfeminism is seen as a specific governmentality (Gill, 2007; Lewis, 2018), a discursive formation with power implications in a Foucauldian sense (Lewis, 2014) and a gender regime (McRobbie, 2009) – all of which suggest an internalised discourse that governs behaviour.

Accordingly, postfeminism is not a distinct theoretical perspective, but rather a specific discursive regime. Gill’s (2007) list of postfeminist sensibilities offers a tool-box of interrelated analytical concepts to characterise and understand the object of inquiry. To further demarcate, postfeminism is not to be confused with post-structuralist feminist theory, which is a distinct epistemological perspective that sees gender as socially constructed as opposed to biologically given, and that interrogates how gender is performed, paying attention to resulting gender hierarchies (Butler, 1990; West and Zimmerman, 1987). It is not post-colonial or intersectional theory either, which extends the interrogation of gender constructions to intersecting constructions of race, ethnicity, class and other social categories (Crenshaw, 1991). Neither is it third-wave feminism; a quasi-political movement that emerged as a response to perceived limitations of second-wave feminism and that emphasises sex-positive girl power and created a space for feminist action for women of colour, young women and queer identities (Showden, 2009; Snyder, 2008). As such, postfeminism is not feminism, at least not as it is normally defined – as the recognition of women’s subordination to men, and the effort to rectify this through collective, political action – but rather a response to feminism. Postfeminism does not negate feminism, rather it co-opts it: ‘postfeminist culture works in part to incorporate, assume, or naturalise aspects of feminism; crucially, it also works to commodify feminism via the figure of woman as empowered consumer’ (Tasker and Negra, 2007: 2).

The achievements of collective feminist activism are part of the postfeminist story but incorporated and taken for granted (Showden, 2009). Even if one can easily demonstrate that such feminist activism has not yet completed its task in terms of fully emancipating women, advances are evident in terms of regulated equality, the repudiation of discrimination and greater personal choice on lifestyle and sexual freedom. Postfeminism recognises and builds upon this argument; examples such as the benefits of commodified female beauty are deemed an achievement by women, as workers, sales people, editors or business owners as providing opportunities for financial and personal independence. Postfeminism is, thus, paradoxical in incorporating feminist as well as anti-feminist discourses. As such, feminism is individualised by postfeminism and staged in a framework of competition compatible with a neoliberal agenda introducing competition between individual women. Furthermore, postfeminism does not accommodate substantive gender equality, or equality as equal results since this would require redistribution of power and resources through politics and the state, typical of socialist feminism, most closely associated with social democratic welfare states. Any feminist gain is now to be gained on market conditions theorised as a change from state feminism to market feminism (Kantola and Squires, 2012).

Consequently, the adoption of neoliberalism from the late 1970s, particularly in its guise beyond an economic model to encompass entrepreneurial self-governmentality has enabled the conditions for the emergence of postfeminism. As such, the postfeminist woman is a self-governing neoliberal subject who takes responsibility to use her agency by developing an entrepreneurial self to identify and exploit contemporary choices. Yet, postfeminism is differentiated from neoliberalism and entrepreneurialism as women cannot simply use markets and agency to escape gendered constraints, but rather are obliged to use appropriate enactments of femininity to navigate gendered challenges (Adamson, 2017). However, the matrix of appropriate femininities available within postfeminism is broadly reflective of those associated with young, attractive, heterosexual women who embrace consumerism to construct a persona that, although individually enacted, reproduces traditional gender norms (Butler, 2013). Thus, postfeminism offers a conceptual promise of entrepreneurial emancipation based upon choice; however, the paradox arises as the idealised image of the postfeminist woman, presented as an aspirational subject, denies choice to value diversity or challenge orthodoxy.

Postfeminism in entrepreneurship studies

Mainstream research on women’s entrepreneurship is typically set in a male–female comparative frame, where women are on the ‘losing side’. This is assumed as women as a category have fewer, smaller and less profitable businesses leading to suggestions of gender-related ‘under-performance’ (Yousafzi et al., 2018). Ahl’s (2006) discourse analysis of published research upon women’s entrepreneurship argued that the construction of the woman entrepreneur as secondary to her male peer results from normative masculinised assumptions prevalent in mainstream entrepreneurship research: first, that the primary purpose of entrepreneurship is profit on the business level and economic growth on the societal level; second, that entrepreneurship is something male; third, that it is an individual undertaking; fourth, that men and women are different; and finally, that work and family are separate spheres where women prioritise, or ought to prioritise, their family. These assumptions mirror Gill’s (2007) postfeminist sensibilities (see Table 1).

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Table 1.

Entrepreneurship assumptions and postfeminist sensibilities.

Assumptions in entrepreneurship studies (Ahl, 2006)	Postfeminist sensibilities (Gill, 2007; Lewis, 2014)	Short version
• The purpose of entrepreneurship is profit and growth • Entrepreneurship is an individual undertaking; it enables development of personal potential through agentic action	• Individualism, choice and empowerment are the primary routes to independence and freedom • Gender equality is achieved; feminist activism is no longer necessary	1. Individualism
• Men and women are different	• Femininity is a bodily property; the sexes are naturally different	2. Sex differences
• Entrepreneurship is normatively male	• Encourages self-surveillance, self-discipline and a makeover paradigm	3. Makeover paradigm
• Work and family are separate spheres and women (should) prioritise family	• Consumerism and the commodification of difference • The retreat to home a matter of choice	4. Commodify femininity

Ahl (2006) found that the most frequent rationale for studying women entrepreneurs was substantive or potential contribution to profitability or growth – women’s subordination was ignored and issues of power were absent. It was the responsibility of the individual woman to ‘make or break it’. This reflects the postfeminist sensibilities of individualism, choice and empowerment as the primary routes to women’s independence and freedom that have become possible as gender equality has been achieved. Similarly, in Lewis’ (2014) analysis of constructions of (post)feminine subjectivities in entrepreneurship texts, the most common construction was ‘individualised entrepreneurial femininity’; supposedly gender neutral, meritocratic and with an equal chance of success if sufficient energy and enthusiasm was invested.

The assumption that men and women are different, or have different preferences, is common in entrepreneurship research seeking to explain performance differences in entrepreneurial traits (Ahl, 2006). This reflects postfeminist sensibilities of femininity as a bodily property and natural sex differences. The assumption of entrepreneurship as something male was obvious in measuring instruments comparing men and women (Mirchandani, 1999; Robb and Watson, 2012). Women were assessed as to whether they measured up to the norm, or not, and if not, they were advised to improve themselves – take business courses, increase their management skills, boost their self-confidence, network better, et cetera (Ahl and Nelson, 2015; Foss et al., 2018). This reflects the postfeminist sensibilities of self-surveillance, self-discipline and a makeover paradigm, and as noted by Marlow (2013), it effectively introduces a blame discourse – women are held responsible for their alleged shortcomings; structures are not. The assumption that work and family are separate spheres and that women prioritise family reflects the postfeminist sensibility that a retreat to the home is a matter of choice.

In effect, women are positioned as different from male entrepreneurs, normally as inferior, but sometimes as the womanly alternative; Ahl (2006) notes the construction of ‘the good mother’ entrepreneur who uses her relational (maternal) skills for the benefit of the business. Similarly, Lewis (2014) found ‘relational’ and ‘maternal’ entrepreneurial femininity; the former is a transformative leader, shares power, promotes trust and pursues collective goals; the latter has a home-based business offering products or services associated with motherhood. Postfeminist elements relate to an emphasis upon essential sex difference, the commercial valuing of traditional femininity – the commodification of difference – and a desired retreat to the home (Lewis, 2014). Women’s proposed disadvantages are here turned into advantages, but none of them challenge the male norm. In short, the message for women entrepreneurs, as summarised in Table 1, column 3, is that first, they are responsible for their own success; second, they are different from and weaker than men; third, entrepreneurship is something male so they must ‘work’ on themselves to become successful; and finally, they could profitably commodify femininity, or retreat to the home. This clearly reflects prevailing postfeminist sensibilities (Gill, 2007).

We contribute to this body of research through a feminist critique of postfeminist assumptions in government policy initiatives for women’s entrepreneurship, using material from two developed but contrasting economies, Sweden and the UK. We focus upon policy initiatives as exemplars for our arguments as they offer selective evidence based upon prescriptive pronouncements shaped by government objectives into seemingly neutral policy documents. As noted, the centrality of entrepreneurship to contemporary socio-economic development has informed an extensive and diverse body of policy initiatives reflective of governmental interpretations of the role of entrepreneurship within society (Bennett, 2014). Such initiatives also reflect and reproduce approaches to issues such as gender equality and the role of women. These two discourses are folded together within specific initiatives focused upon increasing women’s entrepreneurial propensity and activity on the basis of enabling them to fulfil their personal potential while contributing to the generation of wealth. As such, government policy represents the enactment of dominant ideologies transposed into substantive action; dedicated funding to support such initiatives also privileges preferred policy agendas (Barker and Peters, 1993). Accordingly, policy directives are not neutral; they are mechanisms whereby partisan ideas become actions through funded initiatives. Thus, the assumptions that inform such ideals are critical influences given their pervasive representation of normativity. Using a policy critique, we expose how postfeminist ideals have become foundational to government enterprise policy directives.

Method and cases

Government support for women’s entrepreneurship in Sweden

Since the 1960s, Sweden has been associated with a distinct state supported agenda to promote women’s equality acknowledging feminist debates regarding the need to address forms of collective discrimination through an avowedly women-friendly welfare system and family policies (Martinsson and Griffin, 2016). This does not mean, however, that the phenomenon of postfeminism is absent; although the term does not have wide circulation within Sweden, associated sensibilities regarding the desirability of finding individual solutions to gender-related constraints are emerging (Jansdotter Samuelsson et al., 2012). The debate is nuanced through the auspices of government policy where feminist principles remain, but the route to attainment is becoming more attenuated and individualised. We illustrate this argument when analysing the shifting ethos of support initiatives to encourage the contemporary expansion of women’s entrepreneurship within Sweden (Berglund et al., 2018).

Reflecting broader debates across developed economies pertaining to gender, women and entrepreneurship, the emphasis within Swedish enterprise policy has been to encourage more women to enter self-employment on the basis of personal benefit and contributions to national wealth (Berglund et al., 2018). The Swedish policy context for women’s enterprise has a distinctive profile, however, given its association with the encroaching privatisation of many aspects of female dominated areas of the public sector services such as health, care and education (Proposition, 1993/94). This shift has been presented as creating new prospects for women to move from employment to self-employment and so continue to deliver such services while reaping the alleged rewards of enterprise. In addition to the privatised delivery of previously public sector services, entrepreneurship is presented as a beneficial socio-economic option per se: ‘programmes will aim for more women becoming interested in entrepreneurship and innovation, to increase start-ups, and aim for increased competitiveness, efficiency and growth in established companies that are run by women’ (Nutek, 2007:1).

Hence, within the Swedish context, entrepreneurship is stepping in where the state is stepping back assisted by a range of policy initiatives and support programmes to encourage more women to take advantage of emerging opportunities as the economy shifts further towards a neoliberal market model (Ahl and Nelson, 2015). In addition, there is a generic ‘call to enterprise’ for Swedish women as highly educated, agentic individuals with the scope to develop innovative ventures if offered the appropriate incentives and role models (Berglund et al., 2018). Alongside the delivery of previous public provision such policy initiatives are, we argue premised within, and reflective of, postfeminist sensibilities, as described in Table 1.

Government support for women’s entrepreneurship in the UK

Within the UK, however, unlike Sweden, there has never been any statement of intent to include feminist principles, or recognition of such, within policy initiatives (Pascall, 1997). The focus has been upon an equality and inclusion agenda but this relates more to ‘fixing’ women so they are better able to negotiate the barriers they encounter and so release their potential for entrepreneurship (FSB, 2016; Marlow et al., 2008). Consequently, Conservative governments from 1980 to 1997 advocating for the expansion of self-employment did not recognise women as a specific support category given assumptions of a male dominated sector embodied by the oft referenced small business man (Marlow, 2002). This approach changed, however, with the election of successive Labour governments from 1997 to 2010 who adhered to a market-based ideology, but enacted regulation to establish a baseline of fairer employment practices, embed equality and respect diversity (Smith and Morton, 2006). Entrepreneurship remained central to government policy as a pathway to value creation but reflecting the fairness agenda, specific initiatives were focused upon under-represented groups – for example, ethnic minorities and women (Huggins and Williams, 2009). Yet, the rationale for their inclusion was very much upon the lost potential for value creation by such groups as an unexploited resource. So, for example, the 1997 Labour government funded advocacy organisation, Prowess was created to encourage and support women’s entrepreneurial activity and generate evidence to feed back into policy; these twin aims were ‘developed in response to the pressing productivity requirement to encourage more women to start and grow businesses’ (Small Business Service, 2003: 12).

Since the election of a Coalition government in 2010 and successive Conservative governments in 2015/2017, entrepreneurship has remained a central tenet of policy to increase competitiveness and innovation within the UK economy in a post-recession context (Doern et al., 2016). Since 2010, successive governments have, however, reverted to more generic-based enterprise policy models shifting decisions regarding targeted support to Local Enterprise Partnerships (regional groups of private/public partnerships responsible for local enterprise development). The discrete focus upon women’s entrepreneurial activity has diminished becoming subsumed into a broader stance upon equality and opportunity (Burt, 2015). Any acknowledgement of structural barriers or discrimination remains rare. As such, postfeminist sensibilities, such as individualism and makeover inform the presumed solutions to such challenges. Thus, the onus has been, and remains, upon encouraging more women to enter entrepreneurship by providing bespoke support to assist them to develop individualised solutions and strategies to address structural constraints. As in the Swedish case, we can capture the themes here through prevailing postfeminist sensibilities.

Comparisons and differences

Ostensibly, Sweden and the UK would appear to have differing approaches to addressing issues of women’s equality. As Esping-Andersen (1990) noted in his analysis of welfare systems, Sweden is typically social democratic with collective norms and extensive state policies to promote equality whereas the UK is positioned upon the liberal, individualised axis. This would suggest differing stances to policy frameworks to support and encourage women’s entrepreneurial activity; however, with the exception of early policy initiatives within Sweden that acknowledged collective feminist concerns of equality, the focus across both economies has been upon individualised initiatives. In both cases there is acknowledgement that women face specific feminised barriers to realising their entrepreneurial potential that, in turn, constrains their contribution to economic prosperity. It is notable that in the case of Sweden, specific focus has been afforded to ‘womanly’ attributes that afford them advantage when converting public sector employment to self-employment. There is no comparator in UK policy but rather it is entrepreneurship that moulded to femininity to enable women to accommodate gendered responsibilities. Hence, while each economy has differing foundations and traditions, the confluence of neoliberalism, entrepreneurialism and postfeminism is detectable. These notions entwine to shape policy initiatives whereby collective subordination is translated into individual challenges that, with the appropriate encouragement, determination and guidance, women can address and, in turn, reap personal benefits while contributing to national prosperity.

Discussion

The construct of postfeminism has been critically evaluated within the context of cultural (Gill, 2007, 2017; McRobbie, 2009) and management studies (Lewis et al., 2018). Within this article, we extend this analysis to the field of entrepreneurship using as an illustrative example, a critique of the ethos underpinning government policy initiatives within Sweden and the UK aimed at increasing women’s entry into entrepreneurship and the creation of scalable ventures. We argue this policy is founded upon the thesis that if individual women are offered specific forms of support to overcome gendered deficiencies, they can become effective entrepreneurs reaping material rewards, enhancing their own self-efficacy and by extension, enriching the national economy. Through critical analysis of such arguments, we suggest that claims regarding the enabling powers of neoliberalism and entrepreneurialism, percolated through postfeminist claims of emancipation, generate a policy discourse based upon questionable assumptions. First, women are reluctant entrepreneurs who just require guidance to develop more entrepreneurial attitudes. The base point here is that women should be entrepreneurial and indeed, can be if given appropriate help to overcome entrepreneurial deficits such as poor self-confidence. As such, it is assumed that entrepreneurship is a good option for women if they can just adopt appropriate attitudes and subjectivities.

This ‘call to entrepreneurship’ ignores the evidence that for many women, such as those with poor access to entrepreneurial resources, time constraints, caring responsibilities, et cetera, entrepreneurship constitutes a precarious and poorly rewarded form of work (Klyver et al., 2013; Marlow and Martinez Dy, 2018; Yuen et al., 2018). Thus, rather than focusing upon how to negotiate prevailing constraints, there should be more emphasis upon resistance to the call to entrepreneurship questioning why it is presented to women as a generically desirable career option. In effect, sensibilities of individualism, choice and the makeover paradigm are invoked as women are encouraged to reconstitute themselves as entrepreneurs using personal reservoirs of potential to complete the transformation.

This informs our second point that women are a reservoir of ‘unexploited entrepreneurial potential’ that they can choose to exploit and in so doing, facilitate their own self-development while contributing to national prosperity. This is articulated as a form of moral pressure illustrated through the notion of yearning. So, if only women started businesses at the same rate as men in the UK, they could add £85 bn to the UK economy (Deloitte, 2016: 4). Back in 2003 (Small Business Service, 2003: 2) it was if only women in the UK started new ventures at the same rate as in the USA, unemployment would disappear and productivity rise. Thus, policy directives incorporate a moral dimension reflective of a postfeminist sensibility that requires women to address their shortcomings to develop an entrepreneurial self and by doing, contribute to the greater good. This yearning discourse does not account for the fact the majority of small firms (regardless of owner sex) are marginal performers with few prospects for innovation, productivity growth and employment creation (Aldrich and Ruef, 2018). This generates a naive discourse underpinning policy initiatives encouraging more women into entrepreneurship founded upon postfeminist ideals complicit in reproducing a discourse that subordinates rather than emancipates. Thus, contemporary policy initiatives are both enabling and detrimental. They enable advocacy by acknowledging gender bias within entrepreneurship but the manner in which this is addressed, through postfeminist sensibilities of individualism, choice, self-discipline and consumerism is detrimental. In this context, advocacy is subverted by muting challenges to the logic of policy ambitions.

It is acknowledged that in both the UK and Sweden policy agenda, women experience gendered barriers constraining their entrepreneurial potential and participation given structural subordination. This acknowledges collective feminist arguments but reflective of a postfeminist sensibility, women are called to identify with those who have individually navigated collective challenges. For instance, the necessity for positive female role models embodying successful entrepreneurs has been noted. Yet, as Byrne et al. (2019) argue, such role models celebrate white, middle class heterosexual women who epitomise the postfeminist subject given the celebration of individual determination enacted through recognisable forms of femininity. As such, there is a bifurcation between these success stories and those of the majority of women entrepreneurs, many of whose ventures reflect dominant performance profiles of long hours and low margins in a context of structural constraints (Yousafzi et al., 2018). Such role models and success stories are also utilised to present entrepreneurship as an option for those who struggle to access formal employment given poor human capital or limited employment experience such as the socio-economically marginalised, lone parents or benefit dependent (Jayawarna et al., 2014). Such arguments echo postfeminist sensibilities whereby entrepreneurship becomes an individualised solution to overcome the disadvantages of deprivation.

Acknowledgement of structural constraints upon entrepreneurial behaviour challenges the postfeminist privileging of market feminism relating feminist gains to market conditions and free competition between individuals. The playing field is level and to advance, or not, is a choice. Public policy agendas are mediated via private organisations according to the logic of the market that Kantola and Squires (2012: 383) argue ‘not only change(s) the relationship between the agencies and the women’s movement, but also give primacy to those feminist claims that are complicit with a market agenda’. The uncritical call to entrepreneurship has eroded the ethos of feminist collective action and state-led redistribution of power and resources. This, we argue is an evocative illustration of Fraser’s (1995, 1997) argument that neoliberal politics imply a displacement of a politics of socio-economic distribution by a politics of recognition, or identity. Women become recognised as reservoirs of entrepreneurial potential, but this does not necessarily translate into improved socio-economic status (Berglund et al., 2018).

This analysis may be overly pessimistic and certainly requires further evaluation over time; there are growing challenges to the postfeminist discourse and examples of its theoretical and empirical frailty are informing counter movements. Citing examples of women furthering feminist gains, such as the Swedish ‘sisters in business’ or ‘girl geek.meetup’ firms, Ahl et al. (2016) coin the term femInc.ism to denote feminist action through enterprise. We also see net-activism, theorised as a fourth feminist wave (Munro, 2013). While it has been challenged for dividing old and young net-savvy women, and for its lack of real and political impact – ‘slacktivism’ instead of activism – active campaigning has generated legislative changes, legal cases and public debate. The reach and impact of such organising to, for example, lobby for improved welfare rights for self-employed women is fertile ground for future analyses with advocates in the UK already challenging prevailing policy in this area (Stumbitz et al., 2018).

Having explored policy directives within Sweden and the UK, we characterise both cases as postfeminist. They celebrate individual agency, empowerment and choice, building on the notion that women can build their own bright future through new venture creation. Our critical evaluation of the promise of entrepreneurship suggests this is a very fragile promise that rests upon aspirational arguments. Entrepreneurship does not challenge existing gender inequalities; it just recreates them in a new form disguising them under the umbrella of choice, agency and possibility. As Rottenberg (2018: 49) notes, paraphrasing Cameron (2018), ‘it is not enough to say that women should have choices. Rather, we need to ask why things are arranged in a way that obliges women to make certain choices and not others.’ Such obligations can only be dismantled through challenging the power base of collective subordination.

Limitations

The illustrative evidence for our arguments is drawn from our interpretation of publicly available reports and policy initiatives; inevitably we will not have captured everything. Consequently, there is potential to extend the search. We have focused upon two developed economies; while they are contrasted in terms of their attitudes and approaches to socio-economic management and their recognition of feminist principles they share a foundation of wealth and privilege. Evaluating how postfeminist assumptions are applied to transitional or developing economies and the implications of such would be fruitful. We also acknowledge that we are partisan feminist critics that may bias our interpretations of the material presented. While this undoubtedly sways our interpretation and may favour our preferred arguments, such documents are openly available within the public domain so can be subject to alternative analyses. We invite other interpretations to generate reflective debate.

Our critique could also be challenged by popular anecdote and the range of evidence presented through websites and social media devoted to stories of how women benefit from entrepreneurship in terms of choice, flexibility and for some, an escape from employment discrimination and stress. Clearly, some women will have very positive experiences of entrepreneurship in terms of income returns, autonomy and the opportunity to innovate. Our argument is not that all women should eschew entrepreneurship, but rather to question policy rhetoric packaging it as emancipatory and accessible for all if pursued through the auspices of postfeminist sensibilities. Thus, analyses of more detailed, longitudinal survey data are essential to provide evidence regarding income prospects, working hours, performance data, access to benefits, firm sustainability and levels of churn within the population of women owned firms. With such evidence, we could achieve a more detailed picture of the conditions and returns from women’s entrepreneurship.

Conclusion

Drawing upon the evidence presented within this article, we draw two main conclusions informed by a critical position reflective of the postfeminist conditions noted by Gill (2007). First, this might be a time of postfeminist discourse, but these are not postfeminist times. Instead, women’s subordination appears to be recreated, the call to entrepreneurship facilitates a ‘volte face’ in the relationship between the individual and collective subordination. Rather than the latter being deemed a reflection of enduring complex but dynamic power hierarchies that must be dismantled through revealing and reordering gendered social relations, it becomes a problem for women to fix by changing their behaviour. The call to entrepreneurship exhorts women to use their agency and effort to circumnavigate subordination by creating their own jobs, networks and opportunities. Such success generates idealised role models (Byrne et al., 2019) while also acting as a form of discipline to exhort greater efforts from other women as, clearly, ‘she who dares wins’. The architecture of existing gender hierarchies remains in place but is reproduced in novel iterations suggesting that women who adopt postfeminist modes of disrupting this hierarchy stand to gain status and materiality. Power relations are not unpicked, but rather camouflaged as negotiable challenges; in effect, the foundations for subordination are not dismantled, but rather the responsibility to address such inequity is rather neatly passed back to the victim. Postfeminism emerges as an especially insidious governmentality (Dean, 1999), which makes women conduct themselves in such a way as to recreate their own subordination.

Our second conclusion is methodological related to the issue of analysing postfeminist assumptions, or sensibilities, as they articulated within entrepreneurship studies. To count as a feminist analysis (meaning an analysis of the gender/power order), the analysis should not stop at a description of a discourse as postfeminist; rather, we have to adopt approaches and generate evidence to demonstrate the shift in the collective gender/power order such sensibilities generate. Thus, in the specific case of entrepreneurship, we would encourage methodologies exploring how individualised enactments of postfeminist sensibilities within the context of entrepreneurship affect women as a category. At present, however, such indicators are difficult to distil and are beyond the scope of this article; moreover, detailed data to enable cross referencing of key indicators such as income, growth, productivity and flexibility are lacking. The fragmented evidence that is available regarding women, entrepreneurship and issues such as income disparities (Yuen et al., 2018), growth and productivity (Carter et al., 2015), sector shifts (Marlow and McAdam, 2015) and flexibility (Yousafzi et al., 2018) do not suggest positive advances.

Hence, contemporary evidence questions the extent to which entrepreneurship can challenge gender/power relationships. While there are feminist arguments that have been acknowledged within policy directives, such as the structural gendered constraints that limit women’s entrepreneurial behaviour (Ahl, 2006; Ahl et al., 2016; Marlow, 2002), such critiques have been percolated through a neoliberal and postfeminist filter to manufacture individual responses to collective challenges. As such, this represents a paradoxical reframing of the prevailing analytical critique. This could possibly be challenged by a feminist politics of entrepreneurship whereby existing evidence drawn from feminist critiques is acknowledged. This would identify the contradictions of applying individualised postfeminist sensibilities to address collective subordination illustrated by the fact that for many women, entrepreneurship does not offer the advantages (many of which have been achieved through the auspices of politically motivated collective feminist activism) inherent within collectively regulated employment.

Drawing from the critiques developed within this article, we question whether entrepreneurship is a positive option for women. Rather, policy initiatives that draw upon postfeminist sensibilities generate a false promise of individualised opportunity. This represents a fundamental denial of collective subordination that will inevitably constrain women’s entrepreneurial propensity and achievements. In effect, individual victims of collective subordination are held responsible for their own lack of entrepreneurial attainment through the rhetoric of postfeminism.

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