Introduction
“Feminism, as a theoretical perspective and social movement, seeks to reduce and ultimately eradicate, sexist inequality and oppression” (Bell et al 2020: 177). Despite these important aims, it remains a relatively underdeveloped driver of gender and entrepreneurship research. Indeed, much extant research does not take a feminist approach, or if it does, it is implied rather than explicitly used as a theoretical and/or methodological driver (Henry et al, 2016 ). Feminism is not monolithic, taking diverse forms including Islamic feminism, Black feminism, post-colonial feminism, materialist and socialist feminism. Each feminist stance privileges different aspects of women’s lived experiences; however, it is argued that they are linked by broader epistemological concerns of how gender influences “conceptions of knowledge, knowers, and practices of inquiry and justification” (Anderson, 2020).
Epistemological challenges are critical in gender and entrepreneurship research, to advance debate and to understand and critique normative accounts of entrepreneurial activities and behaviours (Marlow 2012). Emerging entrepreneurship research drawing on arts-based methodologies (New, 2019), intersectional feminism (Martinez Dy & Jayawarna, 2020), and autoethnography (Martinez Dy, 2021), and research driven by feminist lenses, such as post-colonial feminism (Hillenkamp and dos Santos, 2019) and postfeminism (Nadin, et al 2020) have added much to recent debates. This special issue subsequently seeks to highlight the potential of feminist informed research to ask new questions that challenge and critique the gendered contours of entrepreneurship throughout the world, offering new and diverse perspectives and insights.
Key topics
- Conceptual articles that engage with debates around feminist philosophies and epistemologies and their potential within gender and entrepreneurship research
- Empirical studies that foreground one or more feminist theories, and use them as drivers for entrepreneurship research design
- Methodological papers, outlining different feminist driven methodologies and research designs when exploring gender and entrepreneurship, particularly studies recognising and exploring the multiplicities of gender in contemporary societies
- Studies that use one or more feminist theories to reframe entrepreneurial activity
- Feminist engagement with intersectionality and the entrepreneur
- Studies based in the Global South, that draw on non-Western feminist philosophies to interrogate and advance our knowledge and understanding of gender and entrepreneurship
- Empirical gender and entrepreneurship papers that employ non-traditional research methodologies and/or methods to meet explicit feminist aims
- Studies that critique current hegemonic feminist approaches and offer alternatives
Key dates
August 28th 2023 – Abstract Deadline
September 30th 2023 – Invites extended to PDWs in November
November 2023 – PDW linked to the ISBE (7th November) and RENT (date tbc) conferences
February 28th 2024 – Full papers submitted
For further information on submitting please click here.