While research has pointed to the lack of gender mainstreaming in rural and agricultural policy, how rural policy determines what is seen as problems of gender inequality in the first place and how it constructs men and women in relation to rural development remains unexplored. In this article we perform an in-depth analysis of how rural policy constructs gender inequality problems and gendered subjects. We employ the 'What's the problem represented to be' approach to analyse the implementation of the European Union's Rural Development Policy in one Swedish region, Jonkoping County. We conclude that gender inequality is largely left unproblematic in relation to rural development, placing women in the subject position of being uninterested in rural development policy and lacking the ability to take it on. The focus on farmers and ICT broadband positions adult, Swedish-born men as the norm, reflecting a neoliberal emphasis on economic growth through competitive businesses. We also conclude that the policy twists 'gender mainstreaming' by claiming that it promotes gender equality, while it in fact takes no action. Paying lip service to gender equality rural policy thereby co-opts feminism, in line with a neoliberal 'postfeminist' discourse, which is harmful to the feminist project. Alternative approaches to gender inequalities suggest that there may be broader, and different, ways of discussing them in relation to rural development, making for a broader spectrum of problematisations and subject positions, which may, in turn, allow a transformation towards gender equality.

Purpose - Policy for women's entrepreneurship is designed to promote economic growth, not least in depleted rural areas, but very little is known about the contributions of rural women entrepreneurs, their needs or how the existing policy is received by them. Using a theoretical framework developed by Korsgaard et al. (2015), the authors analyse how rural women entrepreneurs contribute to rural development and discuss the implications for entrepreneurship policy. This paper aims to focus on the aforementioned objectives.

Design/methodology/approach - The authors interviewed 32 women entrepreneurs in rural Sweden representing the variety of businesses in which rural Swedish women are engaged. The authors analysed their contributions to rural development by analysing their motives, strategies and outcomes using Korsgaard et al.’s framework of “entrepreneurship in the rural” and “rural entrepreneurship” as a heuristic, interpretative device.

Findings - Irrespective of industry, the respondents were deeply embedded in family and local social structures. Their contributions were substantial, multidimensional and indispensable for rural viability, but the policy tended to bypass most women-owned businesses. Support in terms of business training, counselling and financing are important, but programmes especially for women tend to miss the mark, and so does rural development policy. More important for rural women entrepreneurs in Sweden is the provision of good public services, including for example, schools and social care, that make rural life possible.

Research limitations/implications - Theoretically, the findings question the individualist and a-contextual focus of much entrepreneurship research, as well as the taken-for-granted work–family divide. How gender and how the public and the private are configured varies greatly between contexts and needs contextual assessment. Moreover, the results call for theorising place as an entrepreneurial actor.

Practical implications - Based on the findings, the authors advise future policymakers to gender mainstream entrepreneurship policy and to integrate entrepreneurship and rural development policy with family and welfare state policy.

Originality/value - The paper highlights how rural women respond to policy, and the results are contextualised, making it possible to compare them to other contexts. The authors widen the discussion on contributions beyond economic growth, and the authors show that policy for public and commercial services and infrastructure is indeed also policy for entrepreneurship.

Purpose - In this paper, women entrepreneurs are seen as leaders and women leaders as entrepreneurial, making both groups an easy target of postfeminist expectations, governed by calls to embody the entrepreneurial self. Acknowledging that the entrepreneurial self has its roots in the universal, rational and autonomous subject, which was shaped in a male form during the Enlightenment, the purpose of this study is to conceptualise feminist resistance as a process through which the autonomous subject can be de-stabilised.

Design/methodology/approach - Empirically, this study draws on an extensive research project on women’s rural entrepreneurship that includes 32 in-depth interviews with women entrepreneurs in rural Sweden. This study interpreted expressions of resistance from the women by using an analytical framework the authors developed based on Jonna Bornemark’s philosophical treatise.

Findings - Feminist resistance unfolds as an interactive and iterative learning process where the subject recognises their voice, strengthens their voice and beliefs in a relational process and finally sees themselves as a fully fledged actor who finds ways to overcome obstacles that get in their way. Conceptualising resistance as a learning process stands in sharp contrast to the idea of resistance as enacted by the autonomous self.

Research limitations/implications - This study helps researchers to understand that what they may have seen as a sign of weakness among women, is instead a sign of strength: it is a first step in learning resistance that may help women create a life different from that prescribed by the postfeminist discourse. In this way, researchers can avoid reproducing women as “weak and inadequate”.

Originality/value - Through the re-writing of feminist resistance, the masculine entrepreneurship discourse including the notion of the autonomous self is challenged, and a counternarrative to the postfeminist entrepreneurial woman is developed. Theorising resistance as a learning practice enables a more transforming research agenda, making it possible to see women as resisting postfeminist expectations of endless competition with themselves and others.

The last decades have seen major welfare state retrenchment in Europe, not least in Sweden with public sector downsizing, including privatization of schools, care, and health care. The rhetoric connected to privatization stressed the unique opportunities for formerly publicly employed women to start their own businesses in sectors now open for enterprise. Did this materialize? Analyzing twenty years of empirical research on women's entrepreneurship in Sweden we find that privatization resulted in oligopolization and masculinization of the market(s), and that gendered public sector practices were reproduced in the private sector – women turned from low-wage labor to low-profit entrepreneurship. In addition, divisions among women along lines of ethnicity resulted.

Entrepreneurship is by many recognized as a solution to environmental and social challenges of today’s society. However, it has also been criticized since it may maintain the capitalistic demands of growth and efficiency in an unsustainable way. In this paper we like to challenge the current conception of entrepreneurship that aim for societal change by tracing what, how, where and with whom such entrepreneurship is performed. Further, we take inspiration from the idea of diverse economy by Gibson-Graham and introduce the concept of alternative entrepreneurship to explore how it takes shape, change its contours and both challenges and propels contemporary capitalism. In this chapter we present three ethnographic cases unfolding diverse entrepreneurial activities: 1) the case of Oria, who contributes to social justice through fair trade; 2) the case of artisan food producers who contribute to biological diversity and a rural livelihood; and 3) the case of the DiE project//NEEM NGO, that contributes to social inclusion through entrepreneurial empowerment and the development of a micro credit program. We find that the alternative entrepreneurs are not constrained by organizational forms or by a limited number of economic and non-economic activities as to target societal challenges. The alternative entrepreneurs move between different organizational forms such as non-profit and for profit, as well as, undertaking business and voluntary practices to achieve societal change. Finally, we conclude that the ethnographic tracing of alternative entrepreneurship, allowing previously unsighted activities become visible, also creatively destroy the overly-narrow conception of entrepreneurship. 

The social entrepreneurship (SE) discourse habitually casts social entrepreneurs as heroic, creating economic and social value, whereas those whom they strive to assist are portrayed as disadvantaged and in need of interventions. This implies an implicit differentiation between knowing, agentic entrepreneurs and less-knowing, more passive beneficiaries. In this article, we seek to unfold the subtle ordering of relations in SE and problematize power-related aspects and ideological influences that potentially overshadow dimensions of mutuality and relationality inherent to SE. From an examination of two cases, we hypothesize that differentiations between knowing selves and learning others tend to disintegrate when entrepreneurs and beneficiaries enter into closer interaction. Adopting a postcolonial framework, we identify three forms of relations in SE: transactional, ambiguous/interactional and transcending.

Purpose - Contrasting two countries with different gender regimes and welfare states, Sweden and Tanzania, this paper aims to analyse how the institutional context affects the ways in which a neo-liberal reform agenda is translated into institutional changes and propose how such changes impact the preconditions for women's entrepreneurship.

Design/methodology/approach - This study uses document analysis and previous studies to describe and analyse the institutions and the institutional changes. This paper uses Scandinavian institutional theory as the interpretative framework. Findings This study proposes that: in well-developed welfare states with a high level of gender equality, consequences of neo-liberal agenda for the preconditions for women entrepreneurs are more likely to be negative than positive. In less developed states with a low level of gender equality, the gendered consequences of neo-liberal reforms may be mixed and the preconditions for women's entrepreneurship more positive than negative. How neo-liberalism impacts preconditions for women entrepreneurs depend on the institutional framework in terms of a trustworthy women-friendly state and level of gender equality. Research limitations/implications The study calls for bringing the effects on the gender of the neo-liberal primacy of market solutions out of the black box. Studying how women entrepreneurs perceive these effects necessitates qualitative ethnographic data.

Originality/value - This paper demonstrates why any discussion of the impact of political or economic reforms on women's entrepreneurship must take a country's specific institutional context into account. Further, previous studies on neo-liberalism have rarely taken an interest in Africa.

Purpose - Contrasting Sweden and Tanzania, this paper aims to explore the experiences of women entrepreneurs affected by entrepreneurialism. This study discusses the impact on their position in society and on their ability to take feminist action.

Design/methodology/approach - This paper analysed interviews conducted in the two countries over 15 years, using a holistic perspective on context, including its gendered dimensions.

Findings - The results amount to a critique of entrepreneurialism. Women in Sweden did not experience much gain from entrepreneurship, while in Tanzania results were mixed. Entrepreneurialism seems unable to improve the situation for women in the relatively well-functioning economies in the global north, where it was designed.

Research limitations/implications - In mainstream entrepreneurship studies, there is a focus on the institutional context. From the analysis, it is apparent that equal attention must be given to the social and spatial contexts, as they may have severe material and economic consequences for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. The paper raises questions for further studies on the gendering of markets in different contexts, as well as questions on the urban-rural dimension.

Practical implications - In Sweden, marketisation of welfare services led to more women-owned businesses, but the position of women did not improve. The results strongly convey the need for a careful analysis of the pre-existing context, before initiating reforms.

Originality/value - The paper adds to the understanding of context in entrepreneurship studies: Africa is largely an underexplored continent and contrasting North and South is an underexplored methodological approach. This paper further extends and develops the model of gendered contexts developed by Welter et al. (2014).

Building on Alistair Anderson's work, this paper proposes transforming enterprise education to deeply address questions of sustainability, social justice and hope in our time of multiple and complex crises. New pedagogies, practices, vocabularies and connections help us to enact crises in entrepreneurial, ethical and creative ways, enabling us to remain hopeful in the face of unknown horizons. Drawing from critical pedagogies, from Epistemologies of the South, and from the wisdoms of Alistair Anderson, the paper outlines how transforming to a more, hopeful, socially just and sustainable enterprise education could move us beyond present alternatives. We suggest that transforming enterprise education (TrEE) would better facilitate students as ethical change-makers when they engage with their worlds, and its unseen future horizons. TrEE emphasizes the time needed for questioning dominant meanings and space for experimenting with new ones. It invites re-placing us in the margins and with the excluded. It takes an expansive view of the ecosystem, and places enterprise within its wider context. It focuses students, teachers, entrepreneurs and various other stakeholders in learning together with the non-human and relies on sustainable stewardship, social justice and hope at the core of transforming enterprise education.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore and discuss to what extent and why women's entrepreneurship contributes to rural economic viability and gender equality in an advanced welfare state.

Design/methodology/approach - The authors use detailed register data to explore men's and women's rural businesses in the most common industries for rural women entrepreneurs in the Swedish welfare state. Based on a literature review, the authors develop hypotheses and analyse how family, business and industry factors influence earnings.

Findings - Women's rural entrepreneurship is important for rural viability, as women's businesses provide a wide range of services necessary for life in rural areas. Although women's rural businesses are not significantly smaller than those of men, women's income is lower and more sensitive to business and industry variables. Marriage has positive effects for the earnings of men but negative effects for the earnings of women. The authors argue that the results are contingent on the gendering of entrepreneurship and industries, as well as on the local rural gender contracts. For these reasons, the importance of women entrepreneurs for rural viability is not reflected in their own incomes. Hence, women's rural entrepreneurship does not result in (economic) gender equality.

Originality/value - Entrepreneurship scholars rarely explore women's rural entrepreneurship, and particularly not in the Global North or Western welfare states. Therefore, this empirical study from Sweden provides novel information on how the gender order on the business, industry and family levels influences the income of men and women entrepreneurs differently.