Queer theory and entrepreneurial discourses: gender inequalities and alternative forms of analysis toward entrepreneuring

Abstract

Traditionally, entrepreneurial discourses present entrepreneurship as gender-neutral, positioning the male entrepreneur as “normal” and the female as the “other.” These discourses contribute to a reproduction of whom may become the successful entrepreneur, showing relations of inequalities and logic of binary comparison among men and women. Supported by poststructuralist feminist approaches about gender and entrepreneurship using queer theory, this conceptual paper aims to problematize how gender inequalities are exacerbated by the relations of power in entrepreneurship and what are the resistance possibilities that may reduce such inequalities? Propositions for possible remedy is an alternative way to understand the identity of the female entrepreneur and the analysis of the entrepreneurial practices, allowing entrepreneurship to be viewed as organizing, queering identities, and queering entrepreneurship based on entrepreneuring.

Keywords:
Queering entrepreneurship; Resistance; Entrepreneuring; Gender; Discourses

Resumo

Tradicionalmente, os discursos normalizadores que circulam sobre o empreendedorismo tendem a apresentar esse fenômeno como algo neutro em termos de gênero, posicionando o homem empreendedor como “normal” e a mulher empreendedora como o “outro”. Esses discursos contribuem para uma reprodução sobre quem pode se tornar o empreendedor de sucesso, demonstrando relações de desigualdade e uma lógica de comparação binária entre homens e mulheres. Sustentado por abordagens feministas pós-estruturalistas sobre gênero e empreendedorismo a partir da teoria queer, este ensaio teórico se propõe a problematizar as relações de poder e possibilidades de resistência nas abordagens sobre o tema, por meio da proposição de formas alternativas de compreensão das temáticas gênero e empreendedorismo e da análise das práticas do empreender, possibilitando os processos de “queering identidades” e “queering empreendedorismo” a partir do entrepreneuring.

Palavras-chave:
Queering empreendedorismo; Resistência; Entrepreneuring; Gênero; Discursos

Resumen

Tradicionalmente, los discursos normalizadores sobre emprendimiento tienden a presentar este fenómeno como algo neutro en términos de género, posicionando al hombre emprendedor como “normal” y a la mujer emprendedora como el “otro”. Estos discursos contribuyen a una reproducción en lo que respecta a quién puede convertirse en un emprendedor exitoso, demostrando relaciones de desigualdad y una lógica de comparación binaria entre hombres y mujeres. Apoyado en enfoques feministas posestructuralistas de género y emprendimiento basados en la teoría queer, este ensayo teórico se propone problematizar las relaciones de poder y las posibilidades de resistencia en los enfoques del tema, a través de la proposición de formas alternativas de comprensión de las temáticas de género y emprendimiento y del análisis de las prácticas del emprender, habilitando los procesos de “identidades queering” y “queering emprendimiento” basados en el entrepreneuring.

Palabras clave:
Queering emprendimiento; Resistencia; Entrepreneuring; Género; Discursos

INTRODUCTION

The normalizing speeches on entrepreneurship are almost unanimous in considering it a universally positive and neutral economic activity regarding gender (Calás, Smircich & Bourne, 2009; Marlow & Dy, 2018). Such speeches tend to consider men as creator, a heroic figure, and born entrepreneur (Ahl, 2006; Ahl & Marlow, 2012; Bruni, Gherardi & Poggio, 2004; Essers, 2009), while women entrepreneurs are invisible (Mirchandani, 1999), and their experiences are considered inappropriate or insufficient, in a binary logic of comparison between men and women (Ferber & Nelson, 2009). Carmo, Assis, Gomes and M. B. M. Teixeira (2021) strengthen the neoliberal strand of speeches on entrepreneurship, spread through gender conduct rules, to be followed without questioning.

Several studies on gender and entrepreneurship emphasize that disciplines on organizations, management, or economics have established that the successful universal venture is built by men (Ahl, 2004, 2006; Brandão, Marques & Lamela, 2019; Buttner & More, 1997; Dy, Marlow & Martim, 2017; Essers, 2009; Essers & Benchop, 2007, 2009; Essers, Benschop & Doorewaard, 2010; F. L. N. B. Melo, R. R. Silva & Almeida, 2019). This replicates a logic of inequality and subordination of women to men, through a speech about who the entrepreneur can be (Bruni et al., 2004). These speeches, based on a constant repetition of norms, create a uniform effect, by defining masculinity and femininity, which establishes the notion of the subject as a whole, since it only becomes intelligible from what Butler (1993) presents as a heterosexual gender matrix.

Research on entrepreneurship also tend to cause reflections on contemporary social characteristics that reinforce the normalizing condition of the current society, such as the phenomenon of “entrepreneurialization of oneself” (Lopes & A. S. M. Costa, 2021), and gender inequalities at the workplace (Vilela, Hanashiro & L. S. Costa, 2020). Brandão et al. (2019) show that the speeches that circulate within universities on entrepreneurship also contribute to replicate a pattern segregated by gender. Even qualified women professionals have difficulty of socially legitimizing their role as entrepreneurs, associated with difficulties in creating and keeping their own business (Bertolami, Gonçalves, Hashimoto & Lazzarini, 2018), which requires them to do more planning about their decision to become entrepreneurs (Brandão et al., 2019; F. L. N. B. D. Melo et al., 2019).

The entrepreneur is not free or outside the discursive norms; he/she is created by the constant repetition of these norms, meaning that they are responsible for changing the individual into an entrepreneur (Butler, 2004). Butler (1993) observes that not following them is to be exposed to restrictions, which can be social, taboos, prohibitions, threats, or punishments, which contribute to a repetition and replication of the norms on gender identities. Among the stereotypes discursively reproduced on entrepreneurship, one is that it is still the “best solution” for women who wish to have a career in order to reconcile professional and home demands (Calás et al., 2009), which reinforces the gender performativity of these speeches.

However, progress in the gender and entrepreneurship debate show an increase of studies that seek to understand sex and gender as discursive practices that constitute subjectivities, through relations of power and resistance (Ahl, 2006; Ahl & Essers, 2009; Bruni et al., 2004; Corcetti & Loreto, 2017; Dy et al., 2017; Figueiredo, A. N. Melo, Matos & Machado, 2015; Gomes, Santana, Araújo & Martins, 2014; Marlow, 2012; Oliveira, Nelson & Nassif, 2016; Takahashi & R. M. Teixeira, 2006; Vale, Serafim & Teodósio, 2011). Even without a strategy, resistances allow for a resignification of norms, which makes the subversion of identity happen by weakening the norm, enabling its rearticulation (Butler, 1993). The creation of new spaces of resistance and the subversion of gender identities, from the destabilization of power regimes, can be understood by the queer theory (Butler, 2004). Making something queer, then, means a form of resistance to the normative and the normal, offering alternatives to identities considered stable and universal, normalization regimes, and common sense (Alexander, 2003; Parker, 2016).

Therefore, supported by post-structuralist feminist theories, from gender and entrepreneurship studies and the queer theory, this theoretical essay aims to discuss how gender inequalities are reproduced by power relations in speeches about entrepreneurship, and what are the possibilities of resistance in approaches to the topic, by proposing alternative ways of understanding gender and entrepreneurship, and the practices of entrepreneurship. The concept of ‘entrepreneuring’ (Germain & Jacquemin, 2017; Rindova, Barry & Ketchen, 2009; Steyaert, 2007), which defines entrepreneurship as a process, a verb, rather than a mere economic activity, allows us to discuss the process of “queering identities” and “queering entrepreneurship”. This goes beyond the individual and economic context of the topic, seeking to understand power relations in the speeches built in day-to-day life, and enabling the subject to become an entrepreneur.

We divided the text in five parts. As Meneghetti (2011) argues, the essay as a form does not represent the total surrender to the end of formal limits, but a specific way of understanding reality. After the introduction, we present the power relations that permeate speeches on what it means to become an entrepreneur. Then, we show how speeches that circulate on entrepreneurship have a normalizing character, supported by the logic of heteronormativity described by Butler (2004). Finally, we present potential theoretical approaches that allow a broader understanding of entrepreneurial identities, like entrepreneurship as something unfinished and fluid, through the analysis of entrepreneurial practices, in addition to the final considerations.

GENDER, POWER AND DISCOURSE: BECOMING A SUBJECT, BECOMING AN ENTREPRENEUR

The individual sense of what it means to be a man/woman stems from contemporary speeches, where subjects are compelled to ocupy identity positions. Especially in the West, the human being tends to understand his sexuality and gender as something fixed, biological, when in fact he is a social construction based on physical differences, instead of something biological or natural (Brewis, Hampton & Linstead, 1997). For Butler (2004), individuals are not born as women or men; also, for Foucault (1995), people are not born subjects, they become them from power relations. In a 1979 paper, this author observed that power does not have a nature, an origin, but is constantly changing. It is not a property, but a relation that emerges when a social relationship is established (E. M. Souza, 2014).

People and institutions do not constitute themselves as sources of power; however, they are responsible for communicating it in many ways (Foucault, 1979). These regimes of power apply to everyday life, which categorize the individual, mark him with his own individuality, and impose him a real law that must be acknowledged by others and by himself. Thus, there are two main meanings for the word subject: “]…] to be subject to someone by control and dependence; or tied to his own identity by conscience or self-knowledge” (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1995, p. 235; Foucault, 1979).

For Hall (2000), the relationship between subjects and the discursive practices to understand the concept of identities should make room the the question of identification. In this sense, Foucault (2003) argues that the speech is a series of elements that operate in the general mechanism of power. Discursively, subjects are seen as in constant building, in a process that is never complete. To become a subject, in Hall’s concept (2000), implies assuming certain positions in the speech, understanding that these positions are always built from an absence, from the other’s place, but never identically. Equally, Peters (2000), when explaining the subject from a post-structuralist perspective, substitutes the concept of subject by decentralized, fragmented subjectivity. That is, the subject has no essence or origin.

Therefore, nobody has a gender, since it is a process of doing and undoing (Buler, 2004). However, to become gender subjects, individuals need to fit in identity categories - in this case, what means to be a woman or a man, for example. Gender causes a division of humanity between female and male, according to the configuration of the genitals, as if physical caracteristics, by themselves, were able to represent the essential differences between genders, considering behaviors, emotions, and attitudes (Brewis et al., 1997; Butler, 1990, 1993; E. M. Souza, Brewis & Rumens, 2016). E. M. Souza, S. P. Souza and A. R. L. Silva (2013) emphasize that the subject is formed and forms his subjectivity, which is premeated by speeches and power relations, besides being immersed in complex and unstable narratives.

In the entrepreneurial field, contemporary speeches that circulate on the theme are practically unanimous in considering it as an economic and universally positive activity, and neutral in terms of gender (Calás et al., 2009; Marlow & Dy, 2018). These normalizing speeches contribute to place entrepreneurship as a neoliberal ideology, not addressing the conflicts and contradictions inherent to entrepreneurial subjects (Carmo et al., 2021). The power devices that circulate through the speeches positioned man as the idealizer, heroic figure, born entrepreneur (Ahl, 2006; Ahl & Marlow, 2012; Bruni et al., 2004; Essers, 2009), while attitudes of women entrepreneurs are perceived as invisible (Mirchandani, 1999), and their experiences are seen as inappropriate, biased, or distorted (Ferber & Nelson, 2009). Therefore, gender works as a power device that organizes identities and society as a whole. Foucault (1979) uses the term “power device” to present a heterogeneous set that comprises speeches, institutions, decisions, laws, measures, and scientific statements, among others. In that case, the said and the unsaid are the device’s elements, and this is the network that is established among the elements.

For Vilela et al. (2020), the challenges of gender equity pervade several hierarchical levels in organizations, with a substantially lower presence of women at the levels of management and team coordination. Speeches on entrepreneurship show the persistence of gender inequalities arising from distinct structural conditions that operate to women’s disadvantage (Brandão et al., 2019). Vieira, Monteiro, Carrieri and Brant (2019), in their study on career trajectories and choices made by male and female university students, reported attitudes and behaviors associated with genders, which contribute to delimit professional spaces, cause segregations, and keep inequalities in labor relations. Women tend to identify themselves more with social attributes that belong normatively to the female universe, such as family care, low aggressiveness, and low risk tolerance (F. L. N. B. Melo et al., 2019; Vieira et al., 2019). On the other hand, men identify themselves with attitudes and behaviors associated with issues like independence, autonomy, challenge, and risk (Bertolami et al., 2018; Brandão et al., 2019).

According to Butler (1993), the constant repetition of norms creates an uniformity effect, the definition of masculinity and femininity that produces and desestablishes the notion of subject as a whole, since it only becomes intelligible by the heterosexual gender matrix. Therefore, the subject is not free or outside the discursive norms, he is produced by the their constant repetition, which means that the norms change the individual into a subject (Butler, 2004), including an entrepreneurial subject. Hence, the individual can only become a subject through the norms that act in a discursive way, producing categories and identities through the speech (Butler, 1993). The subject does not identify himself with something, but the repetition of norms guides him and forces him to identify with the symbolic order, so that he can exist as a subject (E. M. Souza, 2017).

Therefore, in the speeches that circulate on entrepreneurship, studies such as those by Bruni, Gherardi and Poggio’s (2004) and Dy et al. (2017) show that the woman is still pictured as a less skilled professional, when compared to the entrepreneurial man, by the creation of restrictions and stereotypes about the places they can occupy and what type of companies they can lead. Butler (1993) reinforces that these restrictions may be social, taboos, prohibitions, threats, and punishments that contribute to the reproduction and repetition of norms on gender identity. Among the stereotypes reproduced in these speeches, one says that this is the “best solution” for women who wish to have a career, because it is “easier” to balance professional and domestic demands (Calás et al., 2009), strengthening the gender performativity in these speeches. These performativity acts are authoritarian forms of speech: most of them comprise statements that also define certain actions and exercises of power (Butler, 1993).

Performativity is a domain where power relations act as speeches; it implies that every speech has a history that not only influences, but is also influenced by contemporaneity. This history decentralizes the notion that the subject is the only person responsible for what he says (Butler, 1993). Therefore, normalizing speeches on entrepreneurship are a compulsory repetition of subjective norms that are imposed, and from which the subject cannot get rid of, according to his own will. To become a subject in entrepreneurship means to subject oneself to the existing power relations through speeches, that place the man as the ideal type and the women as the other. Women (and also men) need to adjust themselves to what is normatively viewed as the ideal entrepreneur, being once again stereotyped, as show the study by Bruni et al. (2004), where Italian women entrepreneurs are described as having “iron hands”, since they “lead like men”.

According to Foucault (1995), power is something that puts into play relationships between individuals or groups. The author does not try to describe a power paradigm; instead, he observes how different power devices work in society, regarding subjects, internally and externally (2003). Thus, gender and entrepreneurship speeches can create cascade effects, supported and disseminated in a normative way by the traditional media, marked by the man/woman dichotomy, placing the entrepreneurial woman as something external, “the other”, and gender in entrepreneurship as something that refers only to female entrepreneurship (Ahl & Marlow, 2012; Bruni et al., 2004; Marlow & Dy, 2018).

Butler (1993) argues that gender is performative because it is the effect of a regulatory regime of differences, divided and ranked through restrictions. Therefore, the definition of gender as male of female is an effect of power relations in the speeches on differences (Brewis et al., 1997). Regarding entrepreneurship, this means defining which caracteristics men and women should have, and which behaviors and attitudes they should adopt to become entrepreneurs, as if masculinity and femininity were products of choice.

The various gender interactions affect the activities related to entrepreneurship. Therefore, becoming a subject in the entrepreneurial context does not necessarily imply repositioning the woman in the speeches that circulate on the topic, but instead showing the impacts of these relations, built by norm repetitions in this context (Marlow & Dy, 2018). Gender in entrepreneurship must reflect the acknowledgment of such identity as socially built, essential to the characterization of all subjects, be they men or women (cis and trans), binary or non-binary. In addition, these authors consider that the debate on gender and entrepreneurship must evolve to the several articulations of gender, not restricted to man/masculine, but comprising the multiplicity of ways that allow the individual to become a subject and make him take positions in the entrepreneurial context speeches.

For Butler (1990; 1993), femininity is not a product of choice, but the adoption of a norm, whose complex history is inseparable from disciplinary, regulation, and punishment relations. Thus, to identify oneself as a woman does not necessarily mean to desire a man, as well as desiring a woman does not represent a sign of masculinity, which makes the heterosexual matrix an imaginary logic that reflects a pattern to be followed (Butler, 1993). In this case, building the entrepreneurial speech as a form of masculinity does not occur only through male bodies, but also with the help of images that reproduce what means to be masculine, according to the “common sense”: aggressiveness in doing business and focus on the economic issue, to name a few examples (Bruni et al., 2004; Gay, 2004).

Hence, gender performativity is not a choice about “what gender will I have today”; it is about reaffirming and reproducing norms through which the subject is formed (Butler, 1993). In her vision, all identities operate through exclusion, by the discursive building that produces abject and marginalized subjects, who apparently are not intelligible because they do not fit in “normal” identity categories. Here, exclusion does not mean the deconstruction of the subject to declare his death, as well as to deconstruct the woman category does not mean abandoning this category, but its redefinition (Mariano, 2006). To acknowledge gender as a performative act and surpass the binary notions of this identity, it is necessary to challenge the notion that men and women have gender, that is, gender is a property of individuals (Marlow & Dy, 2018). The normalizing aspect of gender identity and the power relations that exist in speeches are presented in the next section.

NORMALIZATION, HETERONORMATIVITY, AND RESISTANCE: THE ENTREPRENEUR’S IDENTITY REPRODUCTION

The “normal” and “abnormal” categories result from normalization processes, supported by the logic of heteronormativity (Butler, 2004; Miskolci, 2009). The expression considers expectations, demands, and social obligations that stem from heterosexuality as something natural in society (Cohen, 1997; Chambers, 2003). However, heteronormativity should not be reduced to heterosexuality, since it is a group of norms that support social processes of regulation and control, even for those that have an affective relationship with same-sex people (Butler, 2004). Therefore, this concept does not refer only to legitimate and normalized subjects, but also to a contemporary designation of the historical device of sexuality, whose objective is to train everyone to be heterosexual or organize their lives based on what is seen as natural in heterosexuality (Miskolci, 2009).

As mentioned before, for Foucault (1979), the processes of normalization occur through the so-called ‘power devices’, heterogeneous groups that may include speeches, institutions, norms, and rules, among others. These devices organize individuals’ lives, by defining specific paths that must be followed, by forging subjectivities, by regulating and producing identities and members of discursive categories, according to the historical, social, and cultural contexts, such as man, woman, transgender, mother, and father (Rumens, E. M. Souza & Brewis, 2018). Miskolci (2009) observes that normalization processes do not only produce the so-called “others” or “minorities”, given that the production of the abnormal must also consider the normal. This means that normality and abnormality are built together and make up a relationship.

Normalization technologies have an almost identical structure, establishing a common definition of goals and procedures, which take the form of manifests and gather examples of how a well-ordered domain of human activity should be organized (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1995). For Butler (2004), the normalization process occurs through the norms that rule the social practice. The norm governs the intelligibility and normalizes the contexts, and questioning what is out of the norm implies a comparison with the norm itself (Butler, 1990, 2004). Normalization is a form of discipline and surveillance through power relations (Foucault, 2006). Thus, power is seen as an exercise, and knowledge as a norm or a regulation, and all knowledge circulates through the speech (Foucault, 1979).

Normalization can also be understood through power-knowledge strategies, presented by Foucault in his work Sayings and Writtings IV. The author considers that all knowledge is a result of political relationships and conditions, which form the subject and knowledge positivities and domains (Foucault, 2003). Therefore, there are no truth and values to be pursued through knowlegde, since the truth stems from a relationship of strengths, a historical construction, something in constant change (E. M. Souza, Junquilho, Machado & Bianco, 2006). There is no neutral knowledge; every knowledge has its invention, emergence, and origin in power relations. The study on knowledge consists in analyzing how human sciences were constituted, taking into account a relationship between different kinds of knowledge, and establishing a conceptual network that allows its domain over other types of knowledge, and not analyzing intentionally the relationships between types of knowledge and political and economic structures (Foucault, 2003).

In the area of entrepreneurship, the power-knowledge relationship implies that the speech on entrepreneurship and knowledge acts as a mechanism for exercising power (Ogbor, 2000). It is possible to consider this relationship based on Foucault’s concept of dominated knowledge (1979), which can be understood in two ways: on the one hand, the historical contents that were buried, masked under functional coherences; on the other, formal sistematizations. For Ogbor (2000), the idealized system created by individuals about entrepreneurship, based on power-knowlegde relationships, tends to institutionalize academic research on the topic, and the entrepreneur’s day to day. Hence, the use of terms and expressions to characterize the entrepreneur builds an ideology that is reproduced and kept by individuals. The normalized speeches that circulate in society on entrepreneurship tend to naturalize that the contemporary professional is an autonomous economic figure, inserted in a competitive context. And “me entrepreneur” is an individual that needs to be a manager of himself, seeing himself as a business (A. M. Costa, Barros & Carvalho, 2011; Gay, 2004; Lopes & A. S. M. Costa, 2021).

For Rindova et al. (2009), although there is a variation in some entrepreneurship principles, explicit or implicit, they show that to become an entrepreneur, it is crucial to have economic growth as a purpose. In addition, Ogbor (2000) shows constant metaphors that see the entrepreneur as essentially male, with skills above normal, reproducing the stereotype of the heroic white male entrepreneur (Essers, 2009). Several studies on entrepreneurship tend to confirm these speeches, by presenting the phenomenon as an individual, economic, and positive actitivy, in an eternal attempt to find the “ideal entrepreneur” or “the best way to undertake” (Calás et al., 2009; Essers, 2009; Ogbor, 2000; J. F. Silva & Patrus, 2017).

In Brazil, since entrepreneurship is something quite new (began to be addressed more often as of the 1990s) and with a varied scenario, Oliveira et al. (2018) show that research tend to replicate the normalizing speeches on the theme. Therefore, the majority of studies still address the economic bias on entrepreneurship and the attributes that an individual should have, such as the need to take risks, ability to achieve, values, and tolerance to ambiguity (Corcetti & Loreto, 2017; Franco & Gouvêa, 2016; Santos & Moraes, 2014). In addition, Lopes and A. S. M. Costa (2021) show the influence of the context, as contemporary social characteristics tend to strengthen the phenomenon of “entrepreneurialization of oneself”, pointing to losses in the collective and solidarities.

Regarding gender and entrepreneurship, Gomes et al. (2014) observed that most of the 1990s studies on men and women entrepreneurs, still showed a trend to repeat female stereotypes about what means to be a woman entrepreneur, in comparison with a man entrepreneur. Bruni et al. (2004), for example, use the expression “entrepreneurial mentality” to refer to how speeches contribute to building a pattern of actions and behaviors that normalize certain ways of becoming an entrepreneur, at the expense of others.

Despite the progress made by women in recent years, and the increase in studies related to the subject, in Brazil and abroad there is a constant issue regarding the substantially lower presence of women at top business levels, especially in team management (Vieira et al., 2019; Vilela et al., 2020). These gender inequalities are reflected in the entrepreneurial field, where a pattern persists, regardless of qualification. The most innovative and knowledge-intensive sectors are more present in men’s choices, while women’s choices mainly regard ventures linked to people’s care (Brandão et al., 2019).

Butler (2004) states that gender identity has a normalizing character, since it implies building some type of unity, and the search for this unity is normalizing and excluding in itself. Gender becomes a device through which the notions of masculine and feminine are produced and naturalized (Butler, 2004). Masculinity is represented as something positive, though the existence of the penis, the phallic limb symbol of the alter ego and potent. Femininity, on the other hand, is represented not by the presence of the vagina or the clitoris, but by the lack of a penis, that is, as impotence (Brewis et al., 1997). For Ogbor (2000), the entrepreneurship speech follows the eurocentric thinking, that supports traditional dichotomies between men and women, where the masculine is celebrated and associated to positive attributes, such as competition and rationality.

Therefore, research on female entrepreneurship tends to use the masculine as a pattern for comparison (Ahl, 2006; Ahl & Marlow, 2012; Calás et al., 2009; Gomes et al., 2014), being supported and reproduced in academia, in media, and by other entrepreneurs (Dy et al., 2017; Essers et al., 2010). In addition, female entrepreneurship continues to be driven by need, such as unemployment or difficulty to reconcile professional, family, and private activities, while masculine is more associated with innovation and professional self-fulfillment (Brandão et al., 2019; F. L. N. B. Melo et al., 2019).

These approaches, according to Calás et al. (2009) and Ahl and Marlow (2012), contribute to keep replicating discursive norms on entrepreneuship, as the same questions continue to be asked, leading to the same answers, which does not allow the debate to proceed. For Ogbor (2000), another consequence of the legitimation of dominant speeches on entrepreneuship is the masculinization process of the woman entrepreneur. This happens due to the repetition of norms and behaviors that are expected of a “good entrepreneur”. However, Bruni et al. (2004) showed that, when assuming behaviors seen as masculine, women entrepreneurs are once again stereotyped, this time judged as “iron hands” or “heartless”.

However, considering that gender norms are reproduced, and that each replication creates an individualization, every repetition creates a possibility of change of its own repetitions (Butler, 2004). Therefore, as every repetition of the norms is unstable, it opens the possibility of subverting the power matrix with its intelligibility logic. One specific identification brings instabilities and risks, which allows us to say that every power relation creates possibilites of resistance and subversion (Harding, Ford & Lee, 2017; E. M. Souza, 2017). According do Ashcraft (2005), resistance is something polysemic, inconstant, and unstable, which can become a refuse to accept a normative identity or a sense of self that tries to reduce the subject to an object, by not being capable to position himself in any identitary category, thus being uncapable of speaking from any position (Harding et al. 2017). For Steyaert (2010), resisting will not always be something pleasant, but it is necessary and must be done day by day, if the subject wishes freedom. Resistance is not external to power, but is shaped by it (Foucault (1979).

For Scott (2008), it is not possible to say that there is a model of passive or active resistance, because they become two sides of the same process. It is a form of subjectivation, and not something about an already constituted subject, who resists rationally or emotionally. In organizations, resistance has a symbolic role that can encompass several actions, including resignation, tolerance, sabotage, collective confrontation, lawsuits, and even acts of violence (Alvesson & Karreman, 2004). Considering the Latin-American perspective, Irigaray, Celano, Fontoura and Maher (2021) suggest understanding resistance from a decolonial perspective. In the authors’ view, the concept of “resistance” represents a reaction that emerges from “frontiers”, where traditional and current knowledge collide and merge into a new form of resistance, in the context of organizational interactions.

The advance of the debates on gender and entrepreneurship, especially from feminist theories (Ahl, 2006; Ahl & Essers, 2009; Bruni et al., 2004; Dy et al., 2017; Gomes et al., 2014; Marlow, 2012), has showed the increase in the number of studies that include sex and gender as discursive practices that form subjectivities, through relations of power and resistance. Foucault (1995) shows that a power relation is built on two elements that are indispensable, in order to be exactly a power relation: that the “other” - over whom power is exercised - be entirely recognized and kept until the end as the subject of the action, and that a whole field of answers, relationships, effects, and potential inventions opens up (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1995).

The subject is not free to decide and act outside his own power relations and speeches that form him as such (E. M. Souza, 2017). As Parker (2001)observes, this means that the repetition of the hegemonic understandings and the resistance to such reproductions are not products of a choice. However, the speech is never a closed system, and although power relations in speeches affect individuals, there is always a possibility for resistance (Brewis et al., 1997). Identities are discursively built by continuous processes, that is, constant movements of building and deconstruction through which the various possible expressions of identity are formed without a hierarchy between them. In short, no identity is a basis for the others (E. M. Souza, 2017).

Therefore, resistances do not act to become hegemonic forces, as they do not have a strategy. They act by destabilizing what is apparently seen as stable; that is, resistances act in the most diverse ways without being a strategy to impose their hegemony regarding the other forces (Harding et al., 2017; E. M. Souza, 2014). For Foucault (1995), where there is power there is resistance, which means that it is not a relationship between dominant and dominated. In addition, resistance does not mean counter-power or an opposition to the institutionalized power, in order to occupy its place (E. M. Souza, 2014). Even without a strategy, resistances allow a resignification of the norms, which makes the subversion of identity happen by weakening the norm, enabling its rearticulation (Butler, 1993). The creation of new spaces of resistance and subversion of gender identity in entrepreneurship, based on the destabilization of power regimes, can be understood through the queer theory, presented in the next section.

QUEERING IDENTITIES, QUEERING ENTREPRENEURSHIP: A DIFFERENT APPROACH TO ENTREPRENEURIAL PRACTICES

According to Alexander (2003), the term “queer theory” was used for the first time as a provocation. Teresa de Lauretis used the expression as a title for a conference on studies on gays and lesbian, in February, 1990, at the University of California. It is a play on words, with the purpose of criticizing the assimilation movements, since the term ‘queer’, individually, refers to something strange, while ‘theory’ refers to something fixed, stable (Miskolci, 2009). In the organizational context, one of the pioneers in using the queer theory was Martin Parker (2001), when discussing its use and influence in management processes. For Rumens, E. M. Souza and Brewis (2018), queer is a polysemic term, and can be classified as a noun (when describing someone as queer); as an adjective, when referring to policies as queer; or as a verb - queering gender, queering management, or queering entrepreneurship, for example.

Miskolci (2009) explains that the queer theory starts from a distrust towards sexual subjects as stable, and focuses on social classification processes, hierarchizing; that is, on social strategies that normalize behaviors. It is something that has always an open meaning, incomplete, and unfinished. But, as E. M. Souza (2017) explains, this opening and unfinishing do not constitute its weakness, but its strengh and ability to resist the normal. Queering something means a way of resisting the normative, providing alternatives to norms, identities considered stable and universal, normalization, and common sense regimes (Alexander, 2003; Parker, 2016).

Seidman (1997) observes that the potential resistance, in the light of the queer theory, allows a deconstruction, making the familiar a stranger, by questioning what is considered “normal”. Specifically, the queer theory does not try to replace propositions and questioning, but to make the normal permanently open to inquiries and contestations (Epstein, 1996). To queer theory, the speech acts in a normative way, shaping frontiers and building identities and hierarchies among the identity categories themselves (E. M. Souza, 2017). Butler (1990) argues that, in the normative logic of gender, individuals seek answers to questions about which gender expressions are acceptable or not and make the subject intelligible. The queer theory does not seek to find an origin for gender, once it is an identity category influenced by a series of contexts, institutions, practices, and speeches with multiple and diffuse points of origin.

Hence, Rumens et al. (2018) point to the potential of the queer theory to go beyond the studies that emphasize issues related to LGBTQIA+ people at the workplace. To the authors, “queering”, that is, the use of the term queer as a verb, action, process of doing and undoing in other categories, such as queering heterosexualities, prevents reducing queer theory only to a “]...] theory made by queers for queers”, seeking destabilization and problematization from other contexts (Rumens et al., 2018, p. 5). “Queering identities” and “queering entrepreneurship” go beyond the individual and economic context of the topic, by seeking to understand power relations in the discourses built day by day, enabling the subject to become an entrepreneur and produce new entrepreneurial identities that break what it presented as normal, and bringing new arrangements to understand entrepreneurship.

The comprehension of entrepreneurship not as an activity, a noun, but as a process, a verb, is commonly addressed in the literature through the use of the expression entrepreneuring (Germain & Jacquemin, 2017; Rindova et al., 2009; Steyaert, 2007). In his theoretical study, Steyaert (2007) showed several possibilities for using the term, and its potential to develop new meanings under an open conceptual approach. Verduyjn (2015) considers the entrepreneurial process a complex tangle of discourses that form subjectivities about the entrepreneur. It is a precarious, undetermined, open process, and always at the verge of becoming something never finished.

Based on the understanding of entrepreneurship as something fluid, unfinished, and built by relationships and day-to-day practices, some authors suggest a change in the logic of looking at the phenomenon of entrepreneurship and the female entrepreneur (Bruni & Perrota, 2014; Steyaert & Hjorth, 2003). The new focus is on the practices of entrepreneuring and its subjectivities, where this act acquires new meanings when done by subjects whose identities differ from those prescriptively assumed; that is, when the so-called “others” take the control (Steyaert, 2007, 2010; Bruni & Perrota, 2014), such as radical female entrepreneurs. Entrepreneuring allows breaking the molds and current restrictions, enabling a new form of imagining and practicing the entrepreneurial future.

Bruni et al. (2004) mention that one of the identity categories that try to subvert the discursive logic of entrepreneurship, in search of a new social order, is that of the radical female entrepreneurs. Nicknamed as “radicals”, they are women that, motivated by a culture antagonist to the traditional values of entrepreneurship, create initiatives to promote the interest of other women and “minorities” in society. The term was initially used by Goffee and Scase (1985, 2015), for presenting a group primarily interested in the collective, through economic ventures that aimed to promote questions related to the feminine. These women were seen as feminists, since, according to the authors, they tried to go beyond the subordination between men and women, through cooperation initiatives (Cromie & Hayes, 1988; Goffee & Scase, 1985, 2015). Weiss (2017) considers that new developments and trends also require a critical and alternative analysis to understand the effects of change.

For Bruni et al. (2004), the radicals are an alternative for studying female entrepreneurs, by allowing the understanding of their subjectivities, based on their attitudes and behaviours that subvert the normalizing issues on gender and entrepreneurship. By becoming radicals, they can resist to the current power relations and create ways of micro-emancipation (Dick, 2015). It is not just a issue of understanding the phenomenon under a perspective A or B, but of questioning the norm and the very meaning of certain terms (Imas, Wilson & Weston, 2012). Thomas and Davis (2005) observe that these forms of resistance will not necessarily result in a rupture of the current norms and a complete change, but in micro-changes of the social order, as well as a reflection on the multiple ways to think subjectivities and entrepreneurial practices.

Aldrich and Martinez (2015), by studying entrepreneuship and entrepreneurs in the United States, observed that when they begin the process of organizing new ventures, they find contexts where other people, such as suppliers and investors, have their own expectations concerning entrepreneurship practices. The opportunities are then formed by the subjectivities of entrepreneuring, and not by economic forces that drive markets and industries (Aldrich & Ruef, 2018). This reality is also found in Brazil, but with and additional characteristic: the gender bias. Although the country has a similar proportion of men and women entrepreneurs that started their businesses, there is a higher percentage of men in ventures already consolidated (GEM, 2019).

The efforts of radical women entrepreneurs to reduce the several forms of gender inequalities begin the moment they choose the type of business they want to create. In planning, these women consider spaces traditionally occupied by men - such as barbershops, mechanical shops, finance, and new technologies -, thus upsetting the normalizing speeches that seek to define and replicate the logic of the spaces they “can” occupy (Bertolami et al., 2018; Brandão et al., 2019; Vieira et al., 2019). By creating their own ventures, radical women entrepreneurs change the type of business, bringing something new to the market (Bruni et al., 2004). It is not just about becoming an entrepreneur in male-dominated spaces, but also about creating something new and different, based on subjectivities, life experiences, barriers faced in terms of gender, as well as on their own entrepreneurial plans and expectations, queering their endeavors, and hence, themselves.

FINAL REMARKS

This theoretical essay sought to discuss how gender inequalities are reproduced from power relations present in speeches on entrepreneurship, and what are the possibilities of resistance suggested by the approaches on the topic, on alternative forms of understanding it, based on the analysis of entrepreneuring practices. In addition to presenting studies and authors who use perspectives that reproduce the binary logic of gender through speeches, the purpose of this paper was to promote a reflection on different forms of thinking about entrepreneurship, the woman entrepreneur, and entrepreneuring, under a non-hegemonic look, and understanding the theme “entrepreneurship” as something fluid, continous, and built through day-to-day practices. Another proposition concerns the study of radical women entrepreneurs, often seen as the “other” in the literature on gender and entrepreneurship.

Regarding gender and entrepreneurship, this article advanced the debate in the literature, by establishing relationships between the studies on entrepreneurship, through subjectivities, based on the queer theory (Ahl & Marlow, 2012). Pullen, Lewis and Ozkazanc-Pan (2019) consider that gender studies from the perspective of feminist theories should also direct efforts to research that shows the perspective of women - real, subjects of their collective histories - to the detriment of the Woman - a cultural and ideological construct that places her as the ‘Other’, through dominant speeches. Thus, the suggestion of studies based on the identity category entitled “radical women entrepreneurs” can contribute to a focus that goes beyond the economic, business context, presenting power relations in the discourses about what it means to become a subject entrepreneur (A. M. Costa & Saraiva, 2012).

For Aldrich and Ruef (2018), it is urgent that researchers on entrepreneurship pay attention to everyday, ordinary practices, and avoid emphasizing the exceptions that end up by reinforcing stereotypes about what it means to have a successful venture. As A. M. Costa et al. (2011) suggest, identifying the discursive construction of the entrepreneur in different contexts allows questioning a naturalizing vision that considers entrepreneurs as idealized and heroic, who overcome adversities, mythical personalities that reproduce a flawless and always positive system. Entrepreneurship practices involve subjectivities, fluidity, and a process that never ends. The entrepreneur’s day-to-day does not follow a linear logic, something important to consider by those who study the topic. Although the road to understand entrepreneurship as a social change is long, it is crucial to explore the potential of future research agendas, considering not only gender inequalities but also intersectionalities regarding gender, race, and class, for example. In addition, to study radical women entrepreneurs may be a good starting point.

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• [Translated version] Note: All quotes in English translated by this article’s translator.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  16 May 2022
• Date of issue
  Mar-Apr 2022

History

• Received
  06 May 2021
• Accepted
  03 Aug 2021