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Empowerment, Constraint, and theEntrepreneurial Self: A Study of WhiteWomen EntrepreneursRebecca Gill & Shiv GaneshPublished online: 13 Jul 2007.

To cite this article: Rebecca Gill & Shiv Ganesh (2007) Empowerment, Constraint, and theEntrepreneurial Self: A Study of White Women Entrepreneurs, Journal of Applied CommunicationResearch, 35:3, 268-293, DOI: 10.1080/00909880701434265

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Empowerment, Constraint, and theEntrepreneurial Self: A Study of WhiteWomen EntrepreneursRebecca Gill & Shiv Ganesh

Discourses of entrepreneurship and research on women entrepreneurs have proliferated

in the last two decades. This study argues that a particular conception of an

entrepreneurial self underlies much literature on women entrepreneurs and their

empowerment, and identifies several key assumptions of this entrepreneurial self. The

study then assesses the motivations and experiences of several white women

entrepreneurs in a northwestern state in the United States, finding that aspects of the

entrepreneurial self are most evident in the reasons that women provide about why they

became entrepreneurs. However, the experiences the women narrate reveal a more

constraints-centered discourse, which features a particular interpretation of the frontier

myth of the American West, and bears traces of an emergent, collective notion of

empowerment. The authors explain such empowerment from critical and feminist

perspectives, offering the concept of bounded empowerment as a lens through which to

examine entrepreneurship and gender, and discussing its practical implications.

Keywords: Discourse; Empowerment; Entrepreneurial Self; Entrepreneurship; Frontier

Myth; Feminism; Gender; Intersectionality; Whiteness

The entrepreneur cuts a striking silhouette in the U.S. economy. Indeed, economists

have argued that entrepreneurs are principal players in processes of capitalist

accumulation and expansion (Hebert & Link, 1988). It is hardly surprising, then, that

entrepreneurship is central to neo-liberal ideologies of work (Rose & Miller, 1992)

Rebecca Gill (M.A., University of Montana) is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Communication at the

University of Utah. Shiv Ganesh (Ph.D., Purdue University) is Senior Lecturer in the Department of

Management Communication at the University of Waikato. Correspondence to: Shiv Ganesh, Department of

Management Communication, University of Waikato, Private Bag 3105, Hamilton, New Zealand. Email:

sganesh@waikato.ac.nz. Both authors contributed equally to this paper. The data were drawn from Rebecca Gill’s

M.A. thesis project. Both authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers, Sara Hayden, Greg Larson, Jeff

Shay, and Heather Zoller for their useful feedback on various versions of this research. Most of all, they would

like to thank the participants for narrating their experiences and making this study possible.

ISSN 0090-9882 (print)/ISSN 1479-5752 (online) # 2007 National Communication Association

DOI: 10.1080/00909880701434265

Journal of Applied Communication Research

Vol. 35, No. 3, August 2007, pp. 268�293

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and is currently portrayed in the United States as an increasingly attractive option to

rising instability in traditional employment. In the early part of this decade,

entrepreneurs introduced 600,000 to 800,000 new businesses into the U.S. economy

per year (National Commission on Entrepreneurship, 2002).

This silhouette of the entrepreneur, however, has been decidedly masculine, and

researchers have traced the contours of such gendering (Fielden & Davidson, 2005).

For instance, Bird and Brush (2002) have argued that most early studies of

entrepreneurship assumed gender neutrality but were, in fact, based on the

experiences of male entrepreneurs. Moreover, they imply that popular discourses of

entrepreneurship are also masculine in nature, given their epideictic focus on heroes,

captains, conquests, and victories, and the creation and celebration of such masculine

figures as Henry Ford, Donald Trump, and Bill Gates.

Despite the masculine nature of popular images and early research on the subject,

entrepreneurship is often seen as a form of empowerment for women. In the 1990s,

women in the United States represented the fastest-growing segment of business

owners and by 2001 accounted for 28% of all privately held firms, employing 9.2

million people and contributing 2.3 trillion dollars in revenue to the United States

(Center for Women’s Business Research, 2001). Also in that decade, popular literature

on women’s entrepreneurship argued that it was a means of empowerment*a

solution to oppression that women might encounter as they climbed the corporate

ladder (Apter, 1993). This prescription was also evident in scholarly work on the

subject (Bailyn, 1993; Moore, 2000). Unsurprisingly, research into women’s

entrepreneurship blossomed in the 1990s as researchers began identifying obstacles

that women faced in starting and running a business, from finding confidence,

advice, funding, and access to business networks, to overcoming both family hostility

and a culture of masculine advantage (Still, 2005). Even more recently, some

researchers have acknowledged the importance of ethnicity in determining the

experiences of women and have begun to identify issues and challenges faced by non-

white, non-American, and non-middle class women as they embark on entrepre-

neurial careers (Fielden & Davidson, 2005).

This paper aims to further our collective understanding of entrepreneurship and

the experiences of women by assessing the nature of empowerment offered by

discourses of entrepreneurship and comparing such discourses with the ‘‘actual’’

experiences of several white women entrepreneurs. Such assessment is particularly

timely given Ashcraft’s (2006) call to organizational communication scholars to go

‘‘back to work’’ and study occupational identity and the relationship between abstract

professional image and the actual performance of a job. To this end, we seek to

uncover consistencies and inconsistencies between entrepreneurial expectations and

experience . We ask two questions. First: how do white women entrepreneurs interpret

and experience empowerment? And second: how are these experiences related to

larger discourses on entrepreneurialism? We proceed by reviewing mainstream

research on women entrepreneurs, deducing visions of empowerment evident in such

research, and then introduce perspectives on empowerment based upon commu-

nication-centered feminist work on the subject. After laying out our research

Empowerment and the Entrepreneurial Self 269

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methods, we discuss the findings of our study, ultimately consolidating them in terms

of the concept of bounded empowerment: a form of empowerment radically shaped

by intersecting contexts and experience.

Before we proceed, a brief clarification of our central term is in order. Throughout

this paper, we have chosen to use the term ‘‘women entrepreneurs’’ rather than

‘‘entrepreneurial women.’’ We believe these to be different terms based on a

distinction that one might make between the entrepreneur and the entrepreneurial

self . Historically, definitions of entrepreneurship have moved from specific to general.

For example, in 1942, economist Joseph Schumpeter ‘‘gave us the modern definition

of an entrepreneur as the person who destroys the existing economic order by

introducing new products or services, by creating new forms of organization, or by

exploiting new raw materials’’ (Bygrave, 1997, p. 1). Years later, the definition of an

entrepreneur loosened up: ‘‘Entrepreneurship is the process of creating something

different of value by devoting the necessary time and effort, by assuming the

accompanying financial, psychological, and social risks, and by receiving the resulting

rewards of monetary and personal satisfaction’’ (Hisrich & Brush, 1985, p. 4). Recent

definitions of entrepreneurs have been even more broad-based: ‘‘everyone who starts

a new business . . . the person who perceives an opportunity and creates an

organization to pursue it’’ (Bygrave, 1997, p. 2). We endorse this action-oriented

definition which, as we demonstrate below, is distinct from the idea of selfhood itself

as entrepreneurial.

Discourses of Entrepreneurship, the Entrepreneurial Self, and Empowerment

In general, research on women entrepreneurs can be loosely classified into two

categories: traits-oriented research that attempts to identify essential characteristics of

women entrepreneurs, and critical research that focuses on discourses of entrepre-

neurship. The former tends toward managerial perspectives, evident in such journals

as Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice or the Journal of Small Business Ownership

(Ahl, 2004). It is usually driven by some variant of rational choice economic theory

(Inman, 2000). The latter tends to be feminist in orientation, critical of popular

masculine discourses of entrepreneurship and mainstream research on male

entrepreneurs (Ahl, 2004; Brush, 1992; Edley, 2000; Inman, 2000; Nadesan &

Trethewey, 2000). Our perspective is associated with this latter category.

Critical scholars in organizational studies have identified how dominant economic

discourses of entrepreneurship serve to construct an entrepreneurial self devoted to

self-improvement, organizational excellence, and constant work (du Gay, 1996, 2000;

Nadesan, 2002). The entrepreneurial self is thus related to but distinct from the

conception of the entrepreneur laid out earlier, in that entrepreneurs may or may not

have entrepreneurial selves. The entrepreneurial self is driven by what du Gay

identifies as an ethic of personhood, which stresses autonomy, responsibility, and the

freedom of choice.

Feminist scholars Nadesan and Trethewey (2000) have identified a dominant,

masculine discourse in popular women’s literature on success in the United States

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that promotes an entrepreneurial self. We build on this work by identifying several

distinct assumptions about the entrepreneurial self that are evident not just in

popular discourse on the subject, but also in traits-oriented research on women

entrepreneurs. We then discuss how such research conceives of empowerment and

follow up with a discussion of how a communication-oriented feminist perspective

could help us move to more sophisticated conceptions of empowerment.

The Entrepreneurial Self in Traits-Oriented Research

Traits-oriented research tends to assume an entrepreneurial self which strives towards

autonomy, is masculine in nature, is normed white, and is essential, in that it stands

apart from experience. We take each of these four assumptions up in turn.

The entrepreneurial self strives toward autonomy. Traits-oriented literature tends to

characterize the entrepreneur as someone who cherishes and seeks autonomy. Moore

(2005), in particular, refers to ways in which women entrepreneurs desire to leave

male-dominated environments, ‘‘creating a new game using their own rules’’ (p. 44).

The very idea of leaving the game, and being a starter or a business owner, indicates

that autonomy is a core assumption behind constructions of the entrepreneurial self.

While traits-oriented research identifies a wide range of personality and behavioral

characteristics of women entrepreneurs, such characteristics are invariably related to

autonomy. For example, it is in the pursuit of autonomy that women entrepreneurs

take risks (Brush, 1992), seize opportunities (Moore, 2000), engage in innovation

(Chaganti, 1986), and work hard (Buttner, 1993). Neider (1987) characterizes women

entrepreneurs as having a high internal locus of control, thus tending toward

autonomy. Others concur, adding that such autonomy is often accompanied by the

desire to express one’s self (Moore & Buttner, 1997).

The entrepreneurial self is masculine. Interestingly, some traits-oriented studies

position women entrepreneurs as striving for autonomy, and then label that trait as

masculine. For example, Zapalska (1997) argues that Polish women entrepreneurs are

masculine because they possess such traits as determination, autonomy, ambition,

responsibility, and aggressiveness. Brodsky (1993) claims that neither female

managers nor female entrepreneurs self-identify with stereotypically feminine roles.

Rather, they appear self-assured, tough-minded, and aggressive. Clearly, the

association of traits such as autonomy, ambition, and responsibility with masculinity

sets up masculine stereotypes as being desirable and appropriate for women

entrepreneurs to emulate.

However, the evidence from traits-oriented research is that the personality of the

entrepreneur is gender-neutral: it has not found significant differences in

personality characteristics between men and women and men. Two meta-analyses

(Ahl, 2004; Brush, 1992), in fact, claim that men and women entrepreneurs possess

similar personality characteristics. Ultimately, as several critics have argued

(Mulholland, 1996; Reed, 1996), the appearance of gender-neutrality in scholarship

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on entrepreneurialism reinscribes and privileges masculinity, and reproduces gender

inequalities (Ahl, 2004). If women entrepreneurs are seen to be like men, the

implication is that the entrepreneurial self envisaged by traits-oriented researchers is

itself masculine.

The entrepreneurial self is normed white. Historically, traits-oriented research has

neglected ethnicity, either by ignoring non-white women (Moore & Buttner, 1997) or

by simply not collecting data pertaining to ethnicity (Buttner, 1993). However, this

lack of attention has not stopped researchers from translating the insight they gain

from the experiences of (transparently) white women into advice for all women

(Apter, 1993; Bailyn, 1993; Moore, 2000). Some studies in the 1990s began to

examine issues of immigration and ethnicity in the United States (Light &

Rosenstein, 1995). More recently, some studies have detailed the experiences of

African-American women (Inman, 2000), Asian women in the United Kingdom

(Dhaliwal, 2000), and Maori, Samoan, and Tongan women in New Zealand (Pringle

& Wolfgramm, 2005). It is telling, however, that research on ethnicity and

entrepreneurship is constructed as an issue or variable only in the context of

research on minority groups because, as Ashcraft and Allen (2003) argue, such

constructions serve to neutralize, normalize, and, ultimately, privilege whiteness in

organizational studies.

The entrepreneurial self is essential. Given the importance of autonomy to the

entrepreneurial self, it is easy to see how several studies treat the entrepreneurial self

as standing apart from experience. Shapero and Sokol’s (1982) push/pull classifica-

tion, based on research conducted on men, has been identified as the dominant

explanatory framework for the motivations of women entrepreneurs (Orhan, 2005),

evident in research conducted by Cooper and Dunkelberg (1986), Buttner (1993),

and Moore (2005), among others. In the framework, push factors refer to

dissatisfaction with current life situations, and pull factors refer to the lure of

prospective work situations. The language used in this classification is interesting

because it implies that the entrepreneurial self is attracted to some situations but not

others, and that there is some inner drive or force that leads an entrepreneur to find

‘‘something better.’’ It therefore constructs self and experience as discrete theoretical

categories, thereby implying an essential self. In this sense, traits-based research does

not consider ways in which the self is constantly shaped, crystallized, and reshaped

through experience (Tracy & Trethewey, 2005).

Empowerment and the entrepreneurial self. Given the above issues, it stands to

reason that traits-oriented research envisions empowerment as successfully enacting

the entrepreneurial self by achieving autonomy, engaging in risk-taking, innovation,

ambition, and aggressiveness, and searching for something better. Moore’s (2000)

book for practitioners, titled Careerpreneurs: Lessons from Leading Women Entrepre-

neurs on Building a Career Without Boundaries , alludes to such empowerment:

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The successful entrepreneurs you will meet in the following pages add dimension toour understanding of women’s career strategies. Through their stories you maycapture a new view of how expansive career development paths have become in theage of the ‘‘protean career’’ where the individual must be in charge . (p. 1, emphasisadded)

Two aspects of such articulation of empowerment are salient here. First, this is an

individualized notion of empowerment, one that is consonant with Edley’s (2004)

study of stay-at-home entrepreneurial mothers, whose third-wave feminist principles

referred to individual empowerment, encapsulated in the idea of ‘‘wanting it all,’’ and

being strong and self-sufficient. Second, such an articulation of empowerment is also

functionalist, falling under the rubric of what Ashcraft and Kedrowicz (2002) refer to

as an effective management theory of empowerment, which emphasizes competence

and self-efficacy.

Discourses of Entrepreneurship

A critical communication-oriented perspective helps us to question the four

assumptions of mainstream (traits-oriented) research on women’s entrepreneurship.

Notably, critical approaches posit that entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial self

are constituted by societal discourses rather than innate traits. Du Gay (1996), in

particular, is at the forefront of conceptualizing the organizational self as

entrepreneurial, or enterprising, and establishing this concept as not innate, but a

result of a pervasive ‘‘discourse of excellence’’ that characterizes the contemporary

organization itself as post-hierarchical, risk-taking, and entrepreneurial, encouraging

individuals to engage in self-direction and self-management. Individual identities and

subjectivities are thus constituted by such discourse. Nadesan and Trethewey (2000)

attest to the pervasiveness of the entrepreneurial self, noting that the entrepreneurial

subject ‘‘is the pivotal signifier that serves within the success literature as the symbolic

source for readers’ imaginary identifications’’ (p. 227, emphasis in original).

This focus on discourse helps us gain a holistic understanding of entrepreneurial

identities. As Trethewey (2001) argues, such identities are performed via discourses

that emphasize consumerism, personal responsibility, and accomplishment for

professional success. In the case of women entrepreneurs, this enables us to re-

understand the distinctions between the motivations for and experience with

entrepreneurship, and we develop a more colorful image of the entrepreneur/ial

self and entrepreneurial experience by examining how context, history, culture,

politics, and place constitute entrepreneurial identities.

Empowerment and Constraint

What sort of vision of empowerment might we expect from explicitly feminist

literature? Ashcraft and Kedrowicz (2002) detail some problematic issues feminist

researchers face in the study of empowerment, highlighting the fact that empower-

ment can be studied from vastly differing points of view, and arguing for a contextual

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understanding of empowerment. Such understanding could possibly lead to

investigating the existence of multiple, sometimes contradictory, forms of empower-

ment (Kirby, Golden, Medved, Jorgenson, & Buzzanell, 2003). For instance, on some

occasions, the strategic performance of feminine stereotypes can function within a

context to suppress conflict and to obtain a measure of autonomy and control at

work (Edley, 2000).

Recent feminist work on organizational discourse as tension-laden and composed

of paradoxes, ironies, and contradictions (Ashcraft & Trethewey, 2004) points toward

the distinct possibility that empowerment for women entrepreneurs could come from

precisely the places where one would expect to find constraint, thus blurring the

boundaries between understandings of empowerment and resistance. Indeed, Kirby

et al. (2003) argue for this, insisting that ‘‘discursive acts of resistance to dominant

organizational discourses . . . can empower individuals, influencing their identities

and perhaps even transforming organizational practices’’ (p. 4). The literature also

suggests that empowerment has important collective, not just individual, dimensions

(Trethewey, 2001).

Notably, previous empowerment studies in the field of communication have not

extensively addressed the nature of entrepreneurial empowerment (an exception is

Edley, 2004). Much entrepreneurial empowerment literature is in development

studies, where the emphasis is on the use of micro-finance or micro-enterprise in

empowering rural or ‘‘developing’’ women entrepreneurs (Hunt & Kasynathan,

2001; Leach & Sitaram, 2002). Empowerment in the context of women’s

entrepreneurship may emerge as unique from other empowerment models,

especially given its status as an alternative membership contract (Ashcraft &

Kedrowicz, 2002), where entrepreneurs are not engaging in traditional organiza-

tional membership contracts and roles.

We next address how we set about answering the research questions we posed at

the outset*how do white women entrepreneurs interpret and experience empower-

ment, and how are these experiences related to larger discourses of entrepreneuri-

alism? Following this, we discuss how traces of the entrepreneurial self were evident

in the reasons that our participants provided about why they became entrepreneurs.

We then talk about the experiences of our participants, which tended to feature a

constraints-centered discourse, and move to a discussion of how our participants

experienced and interpreted empowerment, highlighting some of its collective

aspects. We conclude the essay by reviewing the implications and applications of

this study, offering the reader the concept of bounded empowerment as a means of

understanding intersections between entrepreneurship, gender, and whiteness.

Methods

Our discussion of methods focuses on participants, procedures, and analysis. We

detail these below.

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Participants

In the spring of 2003, one researcher attended two meetings of the Women’s

Entrepreneurial Network (WNET) group in a northwestern state in the United States

and conducted 23 qualitative interviews of women entrepreneurs in the state.

Participants were recruited using a snowball method, through town chambers of

commerce, women’s business networking groups, and individual networking

recommendations. Participants fell into an age range of 18�65 (the age range of

the state’s workforce); they relied on their businesses as their main source of income;

and their businesses were solely women-owned. The participants are of diverse ages,

business types, marital status, class status, and geographic locations within the state.

Participant demographics are summarized in Table 1. The largely white demographics

of the state resulted in a white sample, which allowed for some conclusions about the

ethnic boundaries of our study (Frankenberg, 1993).

Procedures

Interviews were semi-structured and lasted approximately 40�80 minutes, taking

place in cafes, at the participant’s business, or in a conference space. Interviews were

taped (with permission), and consisted of open-ended questions which focused on

four different areas: motivation for becoming an entrepreneur, family responsibilities,

challenges, and resources.

Interviews were transcribed while research was ongoing, which allowed for

adjustment of the interview schedule to explore emerging themes. Participants

were assigned pseudonyms to ensure confidentiality. There were several stages of

analysis. In the first round, the researcher used Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw’s (1995)

method of open coding. This entailed an initial close reading to gain an overview, and

subsequent readings during which the researcher sought themes or patterns of ideas.

The researcher noted these themes by jotting marginal notes and creating a codebook

(Lindlof & Taylor, 2002). From such coding, key themes were selected for analysis

using Owen’s (1984) thematic criteria of recurrence, repetition, and forcefulness.

For the second round, both authors analyzed the data. We engaged in focused

coding, which ‘‘involves building up and elaborating analytically interesting themes’’

(Emerson et al., 1995, p. 160), and approached the data with questions about the

nature of empowerment evident in participant discourse. We were able to identify

instances where the participants expressed a discourse that could distinctly be

identified as part of an entrepreneurial self, finding that the majority of these

instances were evident in the reasons that participants gave for becoming

entrepreneurs. However, these were not apparent when participants discussed their

ensuing experiences. Here, we found a discourse that centered on engagement with

constraint. We then began to ask questions about the relationship between the visions

of empowerment that our participants had, and the ones that they actually

experienced. This led to a third round of analysis to refine how participants were

envisioning empowerment in their motivations and their experiences.

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Table 1 Participant Summary (N�23)

Pseudonym Age Business type Ownership Marital status No. of children Income No. of employees

Yasmine 18 Health care Partner w/3 women Single 0 not reported 0Amanda 26 Salon and spa Co-owns w/sister Engaged 0 30,000 20Sara 29 Salon and spa Co-owns w/sister Married 0 30,000 20Emily 35 Cafe/antiques Co-owns w/mother Single 0 15,000 1Betsy 35 Computer consulting Sole Single 0 50,000 1Danielle 36 Retail shoes Co-owns w/sister Married 1 not reported 1Melanie 38 Personal org. consulting Sole Married 0 10,000 1Terri 38 Coffee shop Sole Partnered 0 33,000 14Christina 39 Construction Sole Married 3 70,000 23Jessi 42 Retail gift shop Sole Engaged 2 24,000 3Kenna 43 Manufacturing Sole Single 0 71,000 10Cinda 44 Manufacturing/retail Co-owns w/sister Married 3 18,000 2Sunni 48 Hair salon Sole Widowed 1 35,000 4Carrie 48 Copy shop franchise Sole Married 1 150,000 28Erica 49 Bike maintenance Sole Married 0 11,000 0Renata 49 Manufacturing/retail Co-owns w/sister Divorced 2 18,000 3Shawna 51 Retail shoes Co-owns w/sister Married 0 not reported 1Tara 54 Mediation/facilitation Sole Married 2 not reported 0Julie 54 Life coaching Sole Married 3 45,000 3Inga 55 Retail kitchen items Sole Married 2 30,000 5Elinore 56 Adventure travel Sole Divorced 0 100,000 1Morgan 57 Auto. sales/mainten. Sole Divorced 5 120,000 120Marilyn 58 Cafe/antiques Co-owns w/daughter Married 3 not reported 1

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We verified our original findings through informal member-checks with a few of

our actual participants, as well as with other women entrepreneurs in similar

situations, when one of the authors presented the research results at a WNET

meeting. Overall, the analysis was verified by the women present at this meeting.

They expressed agreement with several findings and confirmed our assessment that

the work� life balance was particularly difficult. In addition, those present requested

that we emphasize the need for women’s networking and emotional support. In our

discussion of our findings, we follow Emerson et al.’s (1995) prescriptions about

multivocalic ethnographic research and treat our analysis as a forum for the

expression of our participants’ voices. In keeping with feminist research practice, we

hope we can best portray the experiences of these women entrepreneurs by

foregrounding their narratives.

Results

Our review demonstrates that not only are popular discourses of entrepreneurship

gendered, but so is the essentialized, white(ned), and autonomous entrepreneurial

self that is constructed by traits-oriented research. In this section, we describe the

reasons that our participants provide for becoming entrepreneurs, each of which

relates to the entrepreneurial self and its vision of empowerment in different ways.

Following this, we provide an overview of our participants’ discussions of their

experiences, which features a constraints-centered discourse, and a more emergent

conception of empowerment.

Motivations for Entrepreneurship

As discussed earlier, we found fragments of talk that closely indexed the

entrepreneurial self in participants’ reasons for becoming entrepreneurs. The four

most common reasons that our participants offered for their choice to become

entrepreneurs were autonomy, opportunity, confidence, and self-expression. That

these were the dominant reasons for choosing entrepreneurship serves as a valuable

indication of the extent to which our participants conceived of entrepreneurship in

terms of autonomy and choice when they first launched their businesses.

Autonomy. Approximately half the participants explicitly cited the desire for

autonomy and control as reasons for becoming entrepreneurs. Although the

participants could not be sure that they would find more autonomy, they believed

that entrepreneurship would allow them more say over workplace issues (such as

hours worked) and personal issues (such as childcare). Carrie echoes many of the

participants’ desire for autonomy when she explains:

My biggest, the biggest driving factor for me in owning my own business was

having choices. I wanted to have the choices. I wanted to be the one making the

decisions; I didn’t want somebody else to have control of that for me.

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Similarly, Kenna, who quit her position as a systems analyst for a Fortune 500

company to become an entrepreneur, also discusses a strong desire for autonomy.

When asked why she chose to be an entrepreneur, Kenna answered:

I really don’t like working on other people’s time schedules. I’ve never been aperson who wanted to be told, ‘‘Well, you need to be in here at 8, and then you have

45 minutes for lunch, and then you go home.’’

Desire for autonomy was not just voiced for work situations, but was also evident

in family and personal considerations. For example, Cinda and Julie discussed how

they thought entrepreneurship would help their home life by allowing them to engage

in childcare at work. Sunni’s main catalyst for starting a business was so that she

could control her asthma by ensuring she worked in an environment with clean air.

Thus, participants framed their choice to become entrepreneurs in terms of desire for

autonomy and potential control.

Confidence. Eleven of the 23 participants framed the choice to become an

entrepreneur in terms of confidence. For example, Terri explained that she quit her

job as a teacher in California and moved here to open a coffee bar because of

confidence: ‘‘I don’t know what made me feel like I could do it. It’s strange. I guess I

was just at a brave point of time in my life.’’

While Terri could not explain why she necessarily felt a certain level of confidence,

others were more articulate. Some participants, like Christina and Sunni, attributed

their confidence to past work experiences. Christina’s 17-year employment with a

general contractor gave her the confidence she needed to believe that she could start

her own general contracting company:

I just believed in myself. I know the construction industry so well, inside and out. Ireally believed I could put people in the right places. The bottom line is I know

what it takes to run a construction company, and I just believe in it so much* it’sso easy for me to, the vision is there, so strong, that I never thought I couldn’t do it.

Sunni explained that she had worked in an upscale salon in San Antonio, Texas, and

did really well for herself, which was ‘‘really very confidence boosting, to be a little

[name of state] girl standing extremely toe to toe, and somewhat superior, to her

coworkers.’’

Participants also discussed confidence as a necessity for aspiring women

entrepreneurs. Tara sums up this sentiment when she remarks:

I think a lot of times women don’t want to try things as much as maybe men would.There seems to be a lot of tentativeness rather than more assertive talk, and I think

that that sets us back a little bit as women in business.

This emphasis upon the need for women entrepreneurs to embody confidence

indicates the extent to which the participants thought of entrepreneurship in terms of

agency and, by implication, autonomy. Morgan echoes this sentiment when she

states, ‘‘I think if you have the innate confidence that you can do something, you

can.’’

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Embracing opportunity. There were traces of the entrepreneurial self evident in

participants’ descriptions of embracing opportunity. Indeed, nine participants

explained their venture in terms of combining serendipity with actively embracing

the opportunity presented to them. Initially an employee at her retail kitchenware

store, Inga embraced the opportunity when her boss approached her with the idea of

selling the business. She attributed owning the business to serendipity and

happenstance, but followed up by associating opportunities with control and choice:

If you try something and don’t like it, it’s not like you have no other options . . . asyou get older, you realize that life is about change, and if something doesn’t workout, then you can always go on to something else.

The linkage between opportunity and the entrepreneurial self was also evident in

the responses of 10 participants who explained that they saw a need for a certain type

of business or wanted to fulfill a need in themselves and so created an entrepreneurial

opportunity. For example, Elinore returned from her experience in the Peace Corps

where she realized that she loved to travel. When presented with an opportunity to

start a women’s adventure travel business, she dropped out of a Ph.D. program in

1982 and went into an unconventional business at a time when women’s

entrepreneurship was rare. Likewise, Melanie talked about creating an opportunity

when she decided to quit her job in television, to buy pens and notepads, and to hand

out a mere 10 business cards intending to jump-start her personal organizing

consultancy business. The emphasis on embracing and creating opportunities, and

creating situations, thus clearly shows the assumption of agency that underlies the

entrepreneurial self and also its distinctions between personality and situations.

Self-expression. Finally, a majority of our participants said that they started their

business as a form of self-expression. Some felt that entrepreneurship was a natural

extension of their upbringing and of themselves, while others could not articulate it

but knew that they just had to become entrepreneurs. Importantly, many women felt

that by starting a business, they were able to bring aspects of themselves into their

work lives and workspaces.

A handful of participants felt that they had inherited their entrepreneurial spirit

from their parents. Although as a child, Sunni swore that she would never own her

own business because she had seen how hard it was, she admitted that growing up in

that environment influenced her career choices. Likewise, Renata and Cinda own a

manufacturing and retail sales business and attribute their entrepreneurial attitudes

to their parents, who owned a campground.

Several participants engaged with entrepreneurship due to their personal interests

and passions. Marilyn and Emily, a mother�daughter team, told us that it was

natural for them to open their teashop/antique furniture store:

We’ve always loved antique stores and decorating. Those were just lifelong thingsthat we had a natural interest in anyway. And actually, when we first started, wedidn’t have the tea part, we just had the furniture part. But we also both love teaand coffee and treats, so it just seemed natural. (Emily)

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Another example is Erica, who has been interested in fixing things since she was seven

years old when she noticed, ‘‘You could take anything into [the local] fix-it shop and

it would come out fixed. And I thought, ‘That is pretty neat.’ ’’ Later, when the

interviewer asked Erica if she liked her job as a bike mechanic, Erica’s face lit up with

a smile and her voice jumped up in volume and tone as she answered, almost

laughing:

OH! I absolutely love it!! I sometimes, I sit out there, and I’m thinking, ‘‘I’m50 years old, almost, and I’m still turning wrenches!’’ You know, this is a highschool boy’s occupation, not middle-aged women! And I think, ‘‘What else could Ido that brings me such joy?’’

Thus, the majority of participants did not frame starting, owning, or maintaining a

business as a purely rational, business-minded choice; rather, they saw it as a natural

extension of themselves or a calling from an external source. In this way, their

responses echo some assumptions of the entrepreneurial self, notably the assertions

about the essential nature of the self and the desire for autonomy.

Each of these four factors*autonomy, confidence, opportunity, and self-

expression*that drove the women to become entrepreneurs can also be seen as

forms of self-empowerment, and, in this way, we interpret our participants’ responses

as indicating that they attempted to enact an entrepreneurial self as a means of self-

empowerment. However, when they discussed the day-to-day aspects of being

entrepreneurial, a discourse that centered on constraint was most often evident in

their responses. We unpack this below.

Entrepreneurial Experiences

Our participants indicated that they had experienced several constraints that came

along with being entrepreneurs. Three that emerged from the data were feeling

discriminated against, managing employees, and difficulties with the work�home

balance. As they described these constraints, gender emerged as a key frame.

Discrimination. Discrimination on the basis of gender was cited as a constraint by

approximately half of the participants. Two forms of discrimination were reported,

one being financial discrimination and the other being a more general discrimination

against women in business.

Eight participants felt that they directly experienced financial discrimination from

banks, and more than half viewed finding funding as a general problem for all women

entrepreneurs, even if they themselves had not faced discrimination. Additionally,

seven entrepreneurs received funding from supportive sources such as family

members, and framed the funding they received as ‘‘lucky,’’ indicating their awareness

of potential financial challenges. In our study, participants directly attributed their

financial discrimination to the fact that they are women. Other studies evidence that

gender is widely perceived as a factor in obtaining bank financing (Moore, 1999), and

can affect women’s potential to become successful entrepreneurs.

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In addition to financial discrimination, the ‘‘good ol’ boy network’’ is alive and well

in the state, according to our participants. This network constrained our participants

because they felt that they often had to prove themselves before they were accepted

and supported by others in their industry or related industries. Christina, a general

contractor, found this especially challenging:

I’ve experienced a lot of tough times . . . when I first started. Some of the challengesI faced were . . . delivering bids and having a male architect not even wanting to talkto [me], or deal with [me]. You know, chauvinistic challenges there. Having toprove myself. I feel like I have to work twice as hard as other leaders in the industry.

Even Sunni, who works in a business usually considered ‘‘feminine,’’ feels the

constraint of the good ol’ boy network. When she renovated her building before

opening, Sunni was frustrated because she felt she was continually ignored by

the construction men whom she had hired: ‘‘[I wanted to remind them] ‘I’m going to

be signing my little name on the bottom of your paycheck!’ ’’

Employee management. Participants tended to cite employee management as a

constraint, and gendered it by differentiating between masculine and feminine

management. Research on feminine management styles echoes traits-oriented

research in that it evidences ambiguity about the existence of ‘‘actual’’ differences

across genders (Brush, 1992), even as it reifies and privileges masculine stereotypes.

Some studies assert that women in management exhibit leadership and management

traits similar to those of men, if indeed not more masculine (Thompson, 2000), and

others argue that women manage with less competitive, more relational, and more

supportive styles (Romano, 1994).

Our study helps shift the terms of this debate by moving from the question of

whether there is a difference to how management styles and problems are framed in

terms of gender. Our participants discussed how they felt that women, including

themselves, run their businesses differently from men. Cinda speculates, ‘‘Men have a

tendency to see things in a very linear way, and . . . women have a tendency to be a

little bit more flexible.’’ Amanda observes that women are more emotional at work

and are different managers from men because women make deeper connections with

their employees. Marilyn and Emily indirectly explained that they adopted a feminine

management style because they value worker participation and respect: ‘‘Just

understanding that person you have working for you, and being respectful of their

life*that they have an actual life going on outside of work.’’ In this way, participants

formed an awareness of gender dynamics in the workplace, even as they reified gender

stereotypes about management.

As participants framed their management styles as being specific to women, they

also often overtly framed their work in terms of family. Many participants referred to

their employees as family, and simultaneously explained that, although such

relationships create a supportive and fun environment, they are also a source of

stress. Sara and Amanda, who have quite a large number of employees, commented

extensively on managing employees who are like family members:

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I think that my biggest challenge is probably the fact that we are here every day andyou become like a really big family. I think it’s been very hard for me to separate thefact that you really care about everybody you work with, but you also have abusiness to run, and so I think that that has been definitely the challenge. (Sara)

Sara goes on to explain that part of the challenge is that she will not be liked or will

not be viewed as a good boss because she must reprimand her employees from time

to time.

Again, constraints are framed as gendered. While any entrepreneur may have

trouble with managing employees, participants saw it as a problem specific to women

due to their tendency to create familial relationships at work and to develop strong

emotional ownership of their work. Managing employees, then, can be seen as an

explicitly gendered constraint because it is framed by participants as such.

Home vs. work. Finally, our participants discussed a clear tension in balancing their

desires and obligations at home and work. Such balancing acts emerged as gendered

due to the roles the participants were expected to adopt as partners, wives, and

mothers. Specifically, participants with children had difficulty with completing

housework, finding childcare, and spending time with their families.1

For many participants, being an entrepreneur and balancing a family was the most

significant constraint they faced. The nature of this constraint is such that Inga wakes

up in the middle of the night, Sunni feels deep guilt for what she perceives as her

neglect of her daughter, and both Christina and Tara have to schedule time with their

families so that they may eat dinner together. Morgan recounted her experience of

generally being able to make it home for dinner: ‘‘[But] two to three nights a week, I’d

come back [to work] until two or three in the morning, trying to get work done.’’

And when describing her struggles with balancing work and family, Carrie teared up,

telling the interviewer that she "put the business first [before her family] every time.’’

Jessi admitted exasperation with everyday errands: ‘‘It’s always a challenge to try

and figure out how you’re going to pick up kids from school when you’re a business

owner and you can’t afford to have employees.’’ Jessi and other participants with

children (especially single mothers) also expressed frustration at the fact that it was

often near-impossible to attend their children’s extra-curricular activities. As with the

majority of the participants with children, Jessi’s roles as mother and entrepreneur

combined to give her a large sense of responsibility.2 Shawna and Danielle see family

responsibility as being one of the biggest constraints for women entrepreneurs.

Shawna commented extensively:

I see that women still carry the bulk of keeping the family unit alive. And I thinkabout that. It’s not that their husbands don’t do it, and step in and do a lot, but Istill think that the woman is still the one that knows what’s going on all thetime . . . and we hear the same thing from other women who have families and havehusbands who have a job and they have to travel, so they’ve got to take care of thepets, and take the kids to school, and off to daycare and all that. And then, when allthat’s done, they’ve got to go to work, and then be a successful business owner, andthen take care of all that, and then, boom, when you shut the door, go do the restagain.

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At this point Danielle interjected: ‘‘Cause [the women] I can think of, they [go home

from work] and make dinner, and then have to do the laundry, and clean the kitchen,

and they aren’t saying, ‘Ahh, I’m going to go home and kick back.’ ’’ Shawna

continued: ‘‘Even if they get home and someone still makes dinner, you still have that

feeling of what you need to do’’ (emphasis hers).

Juggling home and work responsibilities is, therefore, a key constraint which our

participants present as gendered. While men are likely to find that they are short on

family time, this constraint was seen as vitiated for women entrepreneurs. The

participants in our study expressed that this is especially trying because of the

additional responsibilities involved in being an entrepreneur, as well as the emotional

and physical investment in family time evident in desires to be at dinner, attend

volleyball games, and help with homework. That this constraint was unexpected is

especially salient in light of the fact that some participants chose entrepreneurship to

make the work�home balance easier.

Empowerment Despite Constraints

We were able to identify and trace a grounded, tacit form of empowerment that was

evident in the responses of our participants as they talked through the constraints

they faced. Namely, there were four ways in which women talked about feeling

empowered by their constraints: framing challenges as ‘‘mental stimulation,’’ finding

determination in the face of discrimination, taking recourse to the idea that they lived

in a frontier state, and seeking and using supportive outlets.

Mental stimulation. Ten participants framed general constraints and challenges in

running a business as being mentally stimulating and allowing for creativity, a

welcome aspect of the inherent difficulties in entrepreneurship. Inga, in particular,

brings up the notion of entrepreneurial challenges as being mentally stimulating in

contrast to her role as wife and mother. Before she bought her business, Inga took

time off work while she raised her family. When asked if she missed working, Inga

replied that, when she went back to school, ‘‘part of it was the stimulation of getting

out of the house and using my mind. Because it’s fairly, um, I shouldn’t say boring,

but it’s pretty tedious, really, to be home all the time.’’ Julie also felt the pull of

wanting mental stimulation when she expressed that one of the reasons for her

entrepreneurship was ‘‘my creativity. You know, I can’t be very creative when I’m

working for somebody else.’’ Eight other participants expressed similar sentiments.

We can also surmise that the notion of mental stimulation is gendered. In Inga’s

case, her role as stay-at-home wife and mother was not particularly fulfilling, and the

search for and encounter with challenges posed by entrepreneurship constituted a

form of self-fulfillment and, subsequently, empowerment.

Determination. Although discrimination was perceived as a constraint, some

participants felt they responded with a determination to succeed, and this feeling

was empowering. Christina best sums this up when she explains that discrimination

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pushes her to ‘‘be on top of [her] stuff,’’ which will help her to become an ‘‘industry

leader.’’ Despite reporting situations where they were made to feel inferior, the

participants said they were determined to continue being entrepreneurs. Erica, for

example, recounts her experience with trying to get a bank loan to start her bicycle

maintenance business, but was denied funding because she lacked the ‘‘necessary

qualifications.’’ In her own words:

First I went in; they wouldn’t give [a loan] to me. So then I started looking at[female] cosigners. . . . [We] went in one at a time, and they said, ‘‘No, no, no, no,no.’’ Finally, I went to our male roommate, and he had an okay job and mostly paidhis bills* if they had told me all they wanted was a y-chromosome cosigner, Icould have provided that without going through all the rigmarole.

Despite this and other challenges, Erica obtained funding and expressed to us that she

absolutely loves her job. This is the same for many of the participants. Feeling

discriminated against has not deterred our participants from their objectives; rather,

it has spurred them into further action. In this sense then, discrimination, although a

constraint for our participants, sometimes served as a means of empowerment

because it enabled them to gain control of their situations. While at times

determination was framed as a result of loving their jobs, at other times, it was

normalized as just another aspect of living where they did.

Living in a frontier state. The vast majority of our participants clearly identified with

the state in which they lived. In describing their experiences, a number of them

explicitly referenced the place where they lived as being a frontier state: a land where

one had to accept limitations and hardships heroically and transcend them in order

to carve out a life. Scholars refer to such cultural conceptions as a frontier myth .

Brown (2004), for example, talks about a frontier myth as ‘‘an active narrative of

conquering the wilderness and overcoming struggles to succeed’’ (p. 276).

The frontier myth was clearly evident when we asked our respondents what it was

like to live and work in that particular northwestern state. For example, Carrie

emphasized the idea that people, in general, talk about the state as being a rough,

tough, pioneer state. This idea is especially evident in our participants’ ideas about

the nature of the people who live in the state. For example, both Cinda and Renata, in

attempting to describe women and work in the state, said:

C: And I think that, too, there is something to be said about the fact that, and Idon’t know if this is just something I bought into personally, but women in [thisstate] are tough. They really are, they’re strong.R: We have a heritage, and from*C: Whether you’re a candle maker, or a women that’s a rancher, or a woman that iscarving out some kind of a craft*you know we know a woman who’s a carver, andshe chainsaws these incredible carvings out of wood, and*R: And welders, and lots of things.C: Yeah, we just know these incredibly strong women. You know, not just mentallystrong, but physically strong as well. And they aren’t willing to let any man say,‘‘You should* .’’ And there’s no reason to think, anywhere in our upbringing, that

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we would need that. We’re just taught, ‘‘If you want something, get it.’’ And I think

they’re persevering, they’ve very tenacious and persevering. They don’t give up easy.

And we don’t give up easy.

Additionally, a large number of participants emphasized the state as being a pleasant,

informal, and rough place to work: one where, according to Kenna, people ‘‘still have

a handshake mentality.’’ As Sunni said, ‘‘I mean, hey! We’re pioneers [here]; we’re

tough girls. You know, hey, it’s a pioneering frontier type of attitude here; it’s a

survival.’’ Most respondents made overt comments that implied acceptance of the

tough challenges posed by living in the state, and their abilities to meet those

challenges. Kelly said, as she tried to describe the state: ‘‘I didn’t move to [this state]

to live in a town. I have no neighbors but my family. It’s 30 miles to the grocery store.

I drive here into town every day, both ways.’’

Interestingly, our participants often invoked the pronoun ‘‘we’’ when framing their

experiences in terms of life in a frontier state. Rushing (1983) points out that the

frontier myth of the American West tends to emphasize rugged and romantic

individualism as epitomized by the figure of the cowboy, so it is possible to deduce

consubstantiality between discourses of the entrepreneurial self and the frontier

myth. However, even as our participants articulated a myth that emphasizes gritty

and heroic individualism, they did so with a sense of collectivity, and this sensibility

clearly distinguishes their articulation of the frontier myth from their articulation of

the entrepreneurial self. In general, then, the frontier myth formed a strong reference

point for our participants when they discussed their experiences as entrepreneurs. As

we discuss later, this has implications for how we understand entrepreneurial

empowerment in terms of whiteness.

Seeking and using support outlets. Despite the constraints they faced, participants’

experiences of support were a major source of empowerment. This further indicates

an important collective dimension to empowerment experienced by our participants.

All participants utilized some type of collective support system for their work and/or

their home, and many of them procured family support, usually from parents. Sara

and Amanda’s parents, for example, financed their business from day one. Because of

this, the sisters did not have to deal with locating funding within a system where they

could potentially be discriminated against. Other participants informed us that their

parents acted as emergency babysitters, and such domestic support helped them deal

with difficult situations at work.

An overwhelming majority of the participants used businesswomen’s groups or

more informal groups of women in order to counter constraints. Betsy, a computer

consultant in a largely male-dominated industry, created a women’s support group

that functions to give the women in her industry a forum to discuss their constraints,

as well as to network and benefit from group work:

We try to collaborate on things that will help us to run our individual businesses,

but if we all do one piece of the puzzle, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel everytime. And we can put in 10% of the effort and get 100% of the work.

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Carrie is part of an informal group of businesswomen who call themselves ‘‘the good

ol’ girls,’’ and explained:

It’s a group of women who meet once a month for drinks and has been a big

support. . . . [I]f anybody came to that group and said, ‘‘I’m really struggling,’’

everybody would try to offer some sort of support or help.

In all the above situations, we find empowerment entwined with the experience of

constraints, reinforcing our speculation that there are some important differences

between empowerment as conceived of in entrepreneurship discourse and trait-

oriented research, and the actual experience and interpretation of empowerment.

Implications and Applications

We have described our participants as entrepreneurs who looked for empowerment

by attempting to enact an entrepreneurial self, and who had to negotiate obscured

terrain once they experienced entrepreneurship. Negotiating constraints, however,

served as the basis for a more emergent sense of empowerment for the participants.

Here, we discuss some implications of the study and some potential applications.

Theoretical Implications

Given the nature and context of empowerment experienced by our participants, we

suggest that scholars should examine entrepreneurship among women as a form of

bounded empowerment (see Mumby & Putnam, 1992)*one that is radically

intersected by context and experience, cannot be considered in absolute terms, and

does not necessarily imply or result in radical democracy. The bounds of

empowerment in this study are evident in four areas: the paradoxical and

contradictory nature of empowerment, its emergent and collective nature, the

ultimate privileging of whiteness, and limited contestations of gender. We discuss

each of these dimensions below.

First, this study establishes that discourse-centered perspectives are well suited for

studying contradictions and tensions in the experience of empowerment. By treating

entrepreneurship as a discourse, we were able to establish how empowerment

experienced by women entrepreneurs in this study ultimately rested not upon the

entrepreneurial self, but upon negotiation with constraints of entrepreneurship.

Namely, our participants found that as they negotiated access to information and

resources, workplace relationships, and much-needed emotional and interpersonal

support, they found a sense of empowerment through greater feelings of self-efficacy

and an ability to act upon the world. Of course, it is not our intent to suggest that our

participants were empowered by simply putting their best foot forward. Rather,

participants indicated that entrepreneurship involved a day-to-day personal struggle

to embrace their goals and passions. Because they experienced empowerment and

constraints at the same moment, their experience of empowerment was flawed and

fluctuating.

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Thus, our study shows that paradoxes and contradictions (Ashcraft & Trethewey,

2004) constitute our participants’ discourse of entrepreneurship. On the whole, the

fact that our participants’ empowerment came from negotiating constraint brings it

remarkably close to the concept of resistance as it has been understood in critical and

feminist organizational communication studies (Ashcraft & Mumby, 2003; Kirby et

al., 2003), further highlighting the value of a discursive perspective in understanding

empowerment and the dynamic interplay between power and resistance.

Second, this study highlights some important collective aspects of empowerment.

A further contradiction in our participants’ experiences is evident in that the

empowerment they experienced, which in many ways was grounded and emergent,

also involved appropriating and referencing dominant cultural narratives such as the

frontier myth. This in turn enabled them to interpret their hardships in heroic terms.

Such heroism, however, had an interesting collective dimension, as evidenced by their

invocation of an inclusive ‘‘we’’; indeed, this invocation seems to be what

distinguishes their appropriations of heroism from images put on offer by popular

cultural myths of entrepreneurialism. In fact, the collective aspect of empowerment

constitutes a key distinction between the experiences of our participants and the

vision of empowerment in the entrepreneurial self. Furthermore, given that almost all

women entrepreneurs were members of formal or informal women’s business support

groups, sometimes creating them when there was no established alternative, it seems

that these participants found a collective approach necessary.

The importance of such collective aspects of empowerment highlights recent calls

by organizational communication scholars to examine collective resistance carefully

(Ganesh, Zoller, & Cheney, 2005). However, the existence of collectivities in and of

itself does not radicalize or democratize empowerment. In fact, our study shows that

the collective ‘‘we’’ in this study was often related to and bounded by frontier myths

about the American West, which, as we argue below, serve to reinscribe privilege

rather than contest it.

Third, our study establishes relationships between whiteness as a form of strategic

rhetoric and the nature of empowerment experienced by our participants. We did not

ask our participants about how they negotiated, or the extent to which they were

mindful of, their ethnic identity in a state that was 91% white. Nonetheless, it is

significant that so many of them invoked various aspects of a frontier myth as they

made references to their experiences and the state in which they lived, and such

references index the pervasive effects of whiteness. As Nakayama and Krizek (1995)

argue, whiteness assumes significance as a strategic rhetoric, one which is important

not because it identifies any essential attributes of whiteness, but because it has the

effect of perpetuating white privilege.

Such privilege can be found in the frontier myth. Dickinson, Ott, and Aoki (2005)

describe the American frontier as a foundational myth that privileges masculinity and

whiteness in its depictions of the American West as a land to be won, tamed, and

owned by (white) heroes who undergo immense hardships to win it. This myth, they

say, is generational, ‘‘adapting to the demands of an age and the psychological needs

of those who would tell the story as their own’’ (p. 85). That the frontier myth is a

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strategic rhetoric which makes connections between whiteness and (sub)nationhood

is further evident when one acknowledges how differently a variety of Native

American narratives of place posit the relationships among people, the earth, and

their futures (McAvoy, 2002).

As they invoke the myth, then, our participants often employ whiteness

strategically to understand their social locations and interpret their experience in a

manner akin to that highlighted by Crenshaw (1997). That they buy into the myth

ultimately highlights the need to understand just how racial discourses may affect

how women entrepreneurs in general interpret their experiences, as well as the

situational and bounded nature of empowerment itself.

Finally, our findings offer insight into women entrepreneurs’ awareness regarding

the gendered nature of entrepreneurial discourse. Given the masculine nature of both

popular and much academic discourse on entrepreneurship, our participants

themselves could be said to be marginalized by entrepreneurial discourse. Interest-

ingly, our findings revealed that they tend to frame the advantages and disadvantages

of being entrepreneurs and doing entrepreneurship as women . Our findings

emphasize that, rather than attempting to understand whether gender differences

in management styles exist or not, it is more productive to focus upon how gender

influences the framing of the experience of managing. Several other studies

demonstrate the central role of framing and sense-making processes in creating

and reifying workplace gender difference (Buzzanell et al., 2005; Coleman, 2003).

From this point of view, gender differences in management styles make a difference

when women see them as making a difference. In this light, that our participants were

able to identify gender as influencing how they framed their constraints can be

viewed as a form of grounded awareness and critique, which in and of itself might be

considered a form of empowerment. However, at the end of the day, the partial way

in which our respondents articulate and critique gender inequities, the overall

perpetuation of gender stereotypes even as they articulate a feminine management

style, as well as their endorsement of entrepreneurship itself, leads to a somewhat

contained contestation of gender in the context of entrepreneurship. This finding is

consonant with communication studies that demonstrate the key role of framing and

reframing situations as a means of partially contesting dominant gender politics in

the workplace (Jorgenson, 2000).

Practical Applications

Given the implications of the study, we recommend two key courses of action. First, it

is clear from our findings that women experienced a sense of empowerment from the

experience of being an entrepreneur, and their responses do indicate a degree of

fulfillment. From a policy standpoint, this would imply that entrepreneurship should

be considered a viable course of action for women who choose it. However, as the

study demonstrates, it is important to recognize tensions between what other scholars

have called occupational image and occupational role (Ashcraft, 2006). Notably,

while entrepreneurship appears to be a viable career choice for women, it may cause

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particular stress for women seeking a solution to problems at both home and work.

Accordingly, from a policy standpoint, the advocacy of women’s entrepreneurship

must be focused away from motivation-oriented approaches that highlight

autonomy, towards approaches that highlight the experience of women entrepre-

neurs, their constraints, and the sense of empowerment that may be derived from

these constraints. Moreover, that the participants both overwhelmingly loved their

jobs and also felt emotional turmoil strengthens the case for more education and

support outlets for women interested in entrepreneurship.

Second, given some of the constraints expressed by our participants, and also

related to the question of empowerment, this study demonstrates the need for

continual and increased financial and support services for women entrepreneurs. The

nature of support services must be carefully tailored to the needs of the particular

group. Given emerging research on ethnicity and gender in entrepreneurship, it

follows that the nature of support should vary widely. Inman (2000), for example,

discusses that access to financial support is especially important for rural African-

American women, who tend to be more embedded in their family networks but have

fewer community connections than urban African-American women might have. She

also highlights the importance of developing transnational support systems for Asian

migrants in the United States who become entrepreneurs and attempt to maintain

strong emotional and financial connections to their homelands. Dawe and Fielden

(2005) argue for the importance of dealing with the masculine-dominated culture in

attempting to develop domestic support networks for Asian women in the UK.

Clearly, the emphasis varies from group to group. In this instance, one can infer from

the data that when building collective support for white, middle-class women should,

in addition to building financial and family support, focus upon building a

community of peers who could offer emotional and social support. Further, given

the extent to which the frontier myth is evident in their discourse, and its

embeddedness in their discussions about empowerment, it may be productive to

engage such a community of peers with alternative conceptions of the relationships

among place, person, and opportunity.

Conclusion

Like all research projects, ours was finite and, hence, limited. Our study might have

benefited from more longitudinal interaction with our participants, to understand

better how they experienced empowerment over a number of years. Future research

could take up issues left unexamined by this study: for one, investigations of the

comparative experiences of a range of different ethnic groups are clearly necessary.

Moreover, comparing women’s and men’s experiences may offer further insight into

how gender serves to frame perceptions of constraints. Since our data indicate that

occupation, as well as gender and ethnicity, is central in configuring gendered notions

of empowerment as well as work�home issues, further studies in the area could well

benefit from examining intersections between occupational categories and white,

gendered identities in entrepreneurship.

Empowerment and the Entrepreneurial Self 289

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Ultimately, we do hope that this research, and recent research on women

entrepreneurs by other communication scholars, serves as a call to increase the level

of support, resources, and education for women entrepreneurs. However, given

Nadesan and Trethewey’s (2000) discussion of professional women’s success literature

as ultimately reinscribing failure, it is important that future entrepreneurial literature

and research allow for multiple ways of doing and supporting entrepreneurship and

for ‘‘alternative’’ success stories. It is astonishing that the voices of diverse women

entrepreneurs, as such a large part of the United States economy, have not been heard

until so recently. We must continue to listen to them.

Notes

[1] In this study, problems with balancing work and home obligations appeared most often

among women with children. Women without children, both straight and lesbian, typically

reported a shared balance of home responsibilities with their partners.

[2] Hochschild and Machung (1989) detail the psychological responsibility that women often

have in households, despite partnerships where the wife and husband make honest attempts

to split responsibilities.

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