Feminisms and entrepreneurship: a systematic literature review investigating a troubled connection

Entrepreneurship has proven to be central to the economic development of market economies, in both developed and developing countries. In addition, entrepreneurship can contribute to social and environmental value generation (Schaltegger & Wagner, 2011) and play a central role in addressing global societal grand challenges (Brammer et al., 2019) such as the end of hunger and poverty, global warming, and gender equality. Entrepreneurship has, for example, proven to enhance livelihood of its actors, the entrepreneurs, often serving as a means of individual, family, and community social redemption (Renko & Freeman, 2018). As mentioned in (Certo & Miller, 2008; Renko & Freeman, 2018), entrepreneurship can contribute to the achievement of social sustainability either by improving the living conditions of those who decide to start their own business (entrepreneurship by disadvantaged groups) or by creating social value for such groups (entrepreneurship for disadvantaged groups). Starting also from these assumptions, international organizations, governments, researchers, and experts agree in recognizing fostering entrepreneurship as a lever to face the impacts of economic, social, and environmental crises at the international, national, and local level (Arafat et al., 2020a, b; European Commission et al., 2021; OECD, 2008; Ribeiro-Soriano, 2017).

These are some of the rationales behind a plethora of international, national, and regional political agendas, initiatives, and projects aimed at encouraging access to entrepreneurship for groups excluded from the business world. Despite the dominant neo-liberal individualistic paradigm, which elevates entrepreneurial action to the highest expression of human potential and presents entrepreneurship as an inclusive (Harrison et al., 2024) and “meritocratic accessible field of economic opportunity seeking behavior” (Ahl & Marlow, 2012), there is indeed considerable evidence of access limitation faced by certain groups based on ethnic, cultural, demographic, and gender variables (Ahl & Marlow, 2012; Fairlie, 2007). With reference to the gender variable, the world of entrepreneurship has historically been analyzed from a purely male point of view (Ahl, 2006), resulting in narratives that depict the entrepreneur as a Darwinian hero, endowed with values traditionally considered as masculine (Gupta et al., 2009). Such a narrative has been fueled by a Schumpeterian vision of (western) entrepreneurship (Nguyen & Nguyen, 2008) and the traditional male dominance over the entrepreneurial system (Minniti, 2009; Orser et al., 2011), with negative repercussions in terms of access to the entrepreneurial world for those who do not fit into the masculine entrepreneurial discourse (Gupta et al., 2009). As demonstrated in the seminal paper by Langowitz and Minniti (2007) with reference to the gender variable, a lower propensity for entrepreneurship by women is due only to contextual variables that largely depend on culture and environment.

Feminist cultures and movements have historically challenged male dominance in various spheres of society, including the business world (Harquail, 2019). Multiple studies adopting feminist theoretical lenses explored the male domination over the entrepreneurial world, when investigating, for example, gender stereotypes, exclusionary narratives, and stereotypical role models (e.g., Balachandra et al., 2019; Gupta et al., 2009; Mc Donnell & Morley, 2015). In the contemporary entrepreneurial landscape new entrepreneurial narratives and identities, such as that of feminist entrepreneurship (Elliott & Orser, 2015; Harquail, 2019) are emerging. However, feminist entrepreneurship is still an underexplored entrepreneurial subgroup and, as Orser et al. (2011) argues, “the prescriptive academic attribution of feminist discourse to women’s lived experiences” risks distorting the academical representation of the phenomenon.

The aim of the paper is to explore the literature that empirically investigates the experience of feminist entrepreneurs. In particular, the study aims to inspect the literature shedding light on the relationship between feminisms and entrepreneurship by giving voice to the entrepreneurial experiences of feminist entrepreneurs. To this end, the study uses a systematic literature review protocol to identify the relevant literature on the topic, and content analysis to highlight the main theoretical and methodological features and themes as well as potential future research streams.

The review allows a heterogeneous and updated knowledge base to be collected and analyzed. Despite a considerable inhomogeneity in definitions, topics, and theoretical framings, the study shows that most papers agree on recognizing the crucial role of feminisms in: (i) women's entrepreneurial empowerment, especially in traditionally male-dominated cultural and geographical contexts and (ii) challenging the neoliberal paradigm. Additionally, the study led to a definition of feminist entrepreneur. Such definition posits the feminist entrepreneur in ontological relation with the concepts of feminist and entrepreneur, while pointing out the differences between feminist entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial feminism.

From a research point of view, the implications of the study are multiple. First, by conducting a systematic review of theories and methodologies adopted to frame the phenomenon, the study provides researchers with methodological and theoretical indications that could inform and drive future research developments. Second, the study points out concepts that may have been inconsistently managed within the research domain and provides a synoptic and comparative analysis of the main definitions and operationalizations. Finally, the study draws up a collection of open questions and issues capable of inspiring future researchers, so contributing to enable the development of a consistent research area. From a managerial point of view, the study provides a summary of feminist entrepreneurship studies that includes information and recommendations, potentially preparatory to activities such as the development of feminist entrepreneurial training courses, incubation projects, and mentorship programs. From a societal point of view, the study contributes to investigating new entrepreneurial identities that are potentially disruptive in terms of social value creation: indeed, the cultural and value structure of entrepreneurs has been shown to play a decisive role in decisions concerning the generation of social and environmental value (e.g., Gunawan et al., 2020; Thelken & de Jong, 2020; Yasir et al., 2022). Investigating and understanding the phenomenon of feminist entrepreneurship could encourage individuals whose set of values could potentially enrich the business world to enter such a world.

The paper is organized as follows: in the “Background and research rationale” section, the theoretical framework of the research and the rationale that led to the generation of the research questions are presented. The “Research methodology” section illustrates the methodological approach and its implementation. In the “Findings” and “Discussion” sections, the results are outlined and discussed. Finally, in the Conclusions, closing considerations are drawn and future research avenues identified.

The section outlines the theoretical assumptions and the research background based on which the research questions are developed. First, the main feminist historical waves and the characteristics common to all feminist strands are illustrated. Then, the relationship between feminisms and entrepreneurship is introduced.

The systematic literature review is a research methodology aimed at investigating a specific topic by leveraging on existing contributions. Originally developed in the medical field to achieve consistency and standardization in the review of medical treatments (Boell & Cecez-Kecmanovic, 2015), the methodology is currently adopted in several scientific fields, including management (Paul & Criado, 2020; Tranfield et al., 2003), entrepreneurship (Kraus et al., 2020), and gender studies (Santos & Neumeyer, 2021). A systematic literature review allows for the identification, evaluation, and correlation of evidence gathered from previous publications. In particular, systematic reviews have become a preferred tool for consolidating knowledge related to a domain, theory and/or methodology (Paul & Criado, 2020). In comparison to other approaches to review, the systematic literature review allows for the avoidance of analyses tainted by sporadic and potentially biased coverage of existing evidence, presenting itself as a methodology endowed with replicability, transparency, objectivity, and rigor (Boell & Cecez-Kecmanovic, 2015; Hiebl, 2023). In order to ensure these features, numerous frameworks have been developed to guide and standardize the systematic review process. The research pipeline adopted in this study was informed by several methodological recommendations contained in (Kraus et al., 2020; Tranfield et al., 2003; Xiao & Watson, 2019). As pointed out in Hiebl (2023), the definition of the sample under review constitutes a critical step in the systematic review process, crucial in ensuring its rigor and reproducibility. For this reason, the following part of this section explains all the steps and rationales that led to the definition of the sampled articles.

The steps that guided the study are illustrated in Fig. 1 and explained in the next paragraphs.

Step 1 and Step 2 deal with research planning. In particular, in Step 1 (Problem Formulation) the research questions introduced in the “Background and research rationale” section are formulated. As shown, the questions are drawn on the basis of an initial analysis of the literature which defined the research background. It is deemed necessary to precisely state the scope of the review, which, in alignment with the defined research questions, focuses on the investigation of empirical studies having feminist entrepreneurship as their subject. Subsequent choices that characterize this research design are therefore made coherently with that scope. In Step 2 (Research Protocol Development) the research protocol is designed: as explained by Kraus et al. (2020), that required the identification of the search database to be queried, the selection of the keywords and formulation of the query, the choice of filters to be applied, the definition of the quality criteria to be met, the definition of the data extraction mode, and the development of the data analysis mode.

In Step 3 (Literature Search) we select 15 primary search terms grouped into two semantic areas (feminism and entrepreneurship). Adopting a precautionary and inclusive approach, the identified search terms are lemmatized: all the search terms led back to the roots “feminis*” and “entrepren*” which identify two different etymological families. The final query is formulated as follows: “entrepren*” AND “feminis*”. The lemmatization process results in a query whose results include, but are not limited to, those of the query achievable by using the 15 primary identified search terms.

The primary identified search terms, lemmatizations and the final query are shown in Fig. 2.

The selected query was launched on two search engines, Scopus and Web Of Science (WOS): such a choice is justified by the scientific relevance and reliability of the two databases (Burnham, 2006; Li et al., 2018). The search fields of the query were title, abstract and keywords. The initial raw output consisted of 446 (Scopus) and 530 (WOS) documents.

Scopus and WOS allow the raw query output to be filtered by exploiting structured bibliographic data such as year of publication, language or scientific area. In Step 4 (Inclusion Screening) we filtered the results to obtain a homogeneous knowledge base by scientific area, language, and publication type. The applied filters are shown in Table 1: the Subject Area filter was set homologously rather than identically, because the two databases index documents by using different classifications. We chose to limit the review to journal articles as they are considered validated knowledge in the business and management literature (Podsakoff et al., 2005): book, chapter, and conference papers were excluded due to the high variability of the peer review process (Jones et al., 2011). After applying the filters, the cardinalities of the outputs fell to 155 for Scopus and 212 for Web of Science.

After a duplicate elimination phase, titles and abstracts of the papers were read. The reading allowed the results to be skimmed down to a sample of 15 articles. The 15 articles selected were read in their entirety: after reading the full text two articles that were not relevant to the research questions were eliminated. The articles excluded after abstract and full text reading were mainly off topic articles not containing empirical studies, articles adopting feminist theory in areas other from entrepreneurship or aimed at investigating gender stereotypes by adopting feminist approaches. Only empirical articles which could have contributed to even one of the research questions were included. The high false positive rate (more than 95% of the articles selected with the query were discarded) is indicative of a certain caution and laxity in the query design phase. At that stage, the 13 selected articles were read and analyzed to identify additional keywords useful to broaden the search or cited articles potentially useful for answering the research questions. In both cases, the activities did not produce any results: no keywords were identified that were not covered by the formulated query and no reference articles were identified aimed at empirically investigating feminist entrepreneurship. We therefore proceeded with the Data Extraction phase.

In Step 5 (Data Extraction) the selected articles were read and subjected to bibliometric analysis and content analysis. Bibliometric analysis deals with the mapping of literary production related to a topic in a quantitative manner leveraging on structured bibliometric data (Schmitz et al., 2017). In particular, the years of publication, journals and nationality of the authors were analyzed, with the aim of addressing the research questions and define the bibliographical boundaries of the obtained knowledge base. Further bibliometric analysis (e.g., co-citation, co-authorship, keywords co-occurence) was not deemed appropriate due to the small number of retrieved articles. Therefore, the research presents a only a bibliometric framing of the selected articles.

Content analysis is a methodological tool for textual data analysis, aimed at identifying manifest and/or latent content widely used for the analysis of business and management literature (Gaur & Kumar, 2018). The adoption of content analysis as a data analysis tool allowed the us to code documents by using themes deductively obtained from the research questions formulated and inductively emerging from the knowledge base (Gaur & Kumar, 2018; Jones et al., 2011; Liñán & Fayolle, 2015; Thorpe et al., 2005). The following themes, grouped in two categories, namely ‘Theories and Methodologies’ and ‘Definitions and Features’ were defined a priori to address the research questions:

As to the theme ‘Methodological protocol’, data were collected on the unit of analysis of the identified works, sampling techniques, sample cardinality and characterization, and methodologies of data retrieval and analysis used. These a priori defined elements were derived from those indicated as fundamental for the development of a research protocol in (Wahyuni, 2012).

In Step 6 (Data Analysis and Synthesis), the textual unit coded in Step 5 were summarized, compared with each other and discussed. In Step 7 (Findings Reporting), the output of the previous step was discussed together with the bibliometric framing.

In this section, the retrieved knowledge base is described and the results of the analysis, classified as bibliometric framing and content analysis, are reported.

The data presented in the “Findings” section proved to be useful in addressing the research questions.

As to RQ-1 (Theoretical lenses and methodologies), the identified theoretical lenses are consistent with the entrepreneurial research domain, even though a hesitancy in uncritically applying the major entrepreneurial theories can be highlighted, to the point that, Orser et al. (2013) discuss in which of the entrepreneurial macro-theories feminist entrepreneurship could be framed. Indeed, none of the identified studies propose an organic and comprehensive framing capable of shaping feminist entrepreneurship as a theoretically grounded concept. Feminist entrepreneurship thus remains an empirical phenomenon that seems to escape an orthodox and simplistic framing, standing in dialectical contrast to both the neoliberal paradigm and certain feminist critiques. The adopted theoretical lenses are often informed by feminist theory, with both theoretical and methodological implications. In line with the suggestions formulated by Ahl (2006) in their seminal paper, gender is not used to conduct static comparative investigations within the identified studies. From this point of view, most of the samples contain, where stated, subjects who identify with the female gender. However, in the absence of theoretically grounded framing, the broad female representativeness is not based on theoretical implications nor precise operationalizations, except in the case of (Orser et al., 2011), but rather derives from specific research needs combined, as discussed below, with the choice of purposive and snowballing sampling methods. In order to develop a theory capable of explaining feminist entrepreneurship, we argue that, from a philosophical-theoretical point of view, pragmatic approaches (Kaushik & Walsh, 2019) oriented towards theory building could be exploited. The use of such approaches for the framing of the feminist entrepreneurial phenomenon could allow not only the development of theories capable of framing it, but also the integration and expansion of existing entrepreneurial theories adopting mixed methodologies. From a methodological point of view, there is a certain homogeneity in adopting qualitative research protocols. The dominance of qualitative approaches is historically connected within feminist research (e.g., Letherby, 2004; Oakley, 1998). Extant research proves to be engaged in the description and qualification phases of the phenomenon (Hlady Rispal et al., 2015), adopting purposeful methodologies. From a methodological point of view, the lack of a theoretical framework also entails the lack of a coherent conceptualization of feminism and entrepreneurship within the research domain. Entrepreneurship is considered a complex phenomenon that cannot be entirely represented within a single theoretical framework: feminisms add complexity by also presenting themselves as extremely heterogeneous movements and cultures. Studies on feminist entrepreneurship do not shy away from considering the complexities related to the two concepts and resort to qualitative case studies that seem, at present, generally preparatory to the development of future theories. It is no coincidence that the identification of feminist entrepreneurs often takes place in an unstructured manner or by resorting to the self-attribution of the attribute 'feminist' by the sample members. However, feminist entrepreneurial research could already rely on methodological tools for measuring feminist identity, which have already been developed within the socio-psychological literature (Henley et al., 1998; Lee & Wessel, 2022). Such tools could enable and accelerate the adoption of quantitative research protocols, thus contributing to the theoretical and methodological enrichment of the research domain.

As to RQ-2 (Definitions and feminist strands), the analysis points out that the terms feminist entrepreneur and entrepreneurial feminist identify different categories. When referring to feminist entrepreneurs, Orser et al. (2011) adopts the already mentioned definition: "female entrepreneurs who own and operate firms targeting female clients, with a double bottom line, one that includes helping women overcome subordination" so binding the category 'feminist entrepreneurs' to a gender (female). Such definition excludes those entrepreneurs who enact their values in ways that are strategically independent from the choice of targeting women. Feminist values can indeed affect leadership, managerial approach, governance and self-legitimization process. In addition, as acknowledged in the Islamic feminism literature, entrepreneurs do not always explicitly manifest feminist values within their business, although these are traceable in their experiences.

In the attempt to make a critical synthesis of what arises from the literature, we define:

The proposed definitions, formulated based on the papers identified within the study, are related among each other as represented in Fig. 6.

The ontological boundaries of the categories defined do not appear to be linked to either biological sex or gender. Based on the retrieved studies, the definition of feminist entrepreneur provided is in line with the experiences gathered and deliberately broad and inclusive, free of any prescriptive indications acting on the strategic dimensions of the enterprise (e.g. customer segment). Entrepreneurial feminists are represented as a subset of the category feminist entrepreneurs: they are configured as change-oriented entrepreneurs who pursue gender equality through the development of innovative processes, products and services, in line with the definition provided in (Orser et al., 2013). However, the proposed ontology does not contain information on the ontological relationships between the represented categories and other entrepreneurial subcategories, such as social entrepreneurs or ecopreneurs. Such ontological relationships could be explored by future research both at the conceptual and empirical levels. In addition, the selected studies do not delve into how the feminist identity of entrepreneurs is reflected in their business strategy. From the point of view of entrepreneurial studies, the research allows to provide a retrospective framing capable of justifying subsequent theory driven or theory building approaches.

In the reviewed literature no evidence of concepts, movements or cultures specifically involved in the feminist entrepreneurial experience is reported. Islamic feminism emerges in the account of the experiences of some entrepreneurs. However, Islamic feminism is not always expression of a manifestly declared identity trait, but rather the result of an a-posteriori interpretation of the authors of the studies. Such studies suggest the possibility of acting for gender equality even latently, silently, in a non-demonstrated and unclaimed manner: these ways of expressing feminism are well explained by the theory of quiet encroachment and contribute to strip the term feminist entrepreneur of the identity and manifest instance that seems to characterize Western experiences. For those reasons, our definition of feminist entrepreneur mentions that feminist values could be enacted both “manifestly and latently”. Furthermore, it has recorded relative absence of overtly cross-cultural studies aimed at detecting the differences and similarities between various feminist entrepreneurial experiences. The work also contributes to informing feminist research and gender studies about an emerging phenomenon, i.e. feminist entrepreneurship, which seems, as emerged in our study, poorly represented and investigated.

As to RQ-3 (Industry and Size), the review shows that feminist entrepreneurs operate in several different industries. Most studies investigate samples containing heterogeneous entrepreneurial experiences in terms of industry and size. On the other hand, a certain homogeneity can be observed in terms of size: studies tend to focus on micro or small enterprises. In any case, none of the studies used size or industry as comparative analytical variables, so further confirming that the domain is still academically unexplored.

Feminist entrepreneurs are an underexplored entrepreneurial reality at the level of empirical academic research. The neo-liberal paradigm sees entrepreneurship as the ultimate expression of individual human fulfilment, and presents the entrepreneurial world as freely accessible. The dominant entrepreneurial models, also, provide prejudicial representations of the entrepreneur and contribute to the exclusion of minorities from the entrepreneurial world. By using a systematic literature analysis protocol embedded with bibliometric framing and content analysis, we investigated extant literature aimed at empirically investigating the relations between feminisms and entrepreneurship to shed light on the theoretical and methodological frameworks used, the definitions and operationalization adopted, and the characteristics of the samples investigated. The results confirmed that feminist entrepreneurship is described as a challenger of the neoliberal model and highly patriarchal contexts. The research carried out on feminist entrepreneurs investigates different aspects of the entrepreneurial experience, ranging from entrepreneurial identity and leadership to networking and community building. Different theoretical frameworks are used to adapt to the topics investigated: such heterogeneity is not reflected at the methodological level, where the tool of the semi-open interview emerged as dominant. The large number of studies aimed at exploring the possibility of creating new theories underlines the novelty of the topic and the need to identify or develop a theory capable of framing feminist values and ethics in the entrepreneurial field, as also argued in (Orser et al., 2013). At the definitional level, the identified studies have not always adopted a precise definition and operationalization of feminist entrepreneurship. Also, despite the extreme fragmentation of concepts pertaining to feminism, scholars rarely associate their samples to a particular feminist strand. That results in a lack of homogeneity in the studies which could be overcome by leveraging on the sociological-psychological literature that tries to frame the feminist experiences in distinct categories (e.g., Henley et al., 1998; Lee & Wessel, 2022) as suggested in the “Discussion” section. The literature has investigated feminist entrepreneurs working in different industries: it seems, however, that the heterogeneity is more due to the difficulty of identifying feminist entrepreneurs pertaining to the same industry than to the need to include the industry as an element of investigation.

The systematic literature review made it possible, from a research point of view to collect, analyze and compare the literature on feminist entrepreneurship, so allowing the main themes, theoretical lenses and methodological approaches to be highlighted. Also, a first attempt of defining an ontology concerning feminist entrepreneurs is provided. The ontology can be expanded and further detailed by future research. Finally, the work highlights the themes and relationships between them so providing researchers with a summary of the knowledge currently available on the topic.

From a managerial perspective, the research contributed to analyzing and comparing heterogeneous entrepreneurial experiences, laying the foundations for a holistic understanding of the feminist entrepreneurial phenomenon. From a societal point of view, the research contributes to gathering and synthesizing knowledge on feminist entrepreneurship, a phenomenon potentially disruptive in terms of impact on local and national economies, as well as on the lives and careers of individuals traditionally excluded from the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Starting from the considerations illustrated in the Discussion, issues that could be further investigated include: (i) the role of feminisms on entrepreneurial experiences within unexplored cultural settings (e.g., Europe and Africa); (ii) how feminist values are or could be translated into more environmentally and socially sustainable entrepreneurial choices; (iii) how feminist ethics is introduced and translated at the level of business model and processes. With regard to the latter two points, some initial attempts of research can be retrieved within the grey literature (Harquail, 2016, 2019). Also, further studies could deal with the development of grounded theoretical frameworks able of explaining the phenomenon of feminist entrepreneurship.

The paper is not exempt from limitations. Despite the accurate literature review protocol, it is not certain that all the material studies with the themes were selected. The set of keywords used and the filters applied, despite the adoption of an approach that, by leveraging on lemmatization, ensured a certain caution, could have excluded potentially relevant research.