Legitimacy and women entrepreneurs in masculinised industries: a postfeminist perspective

Purpose This paper explores the ways women entrepreneurs in male-dominated industries do identity work in order to gain legitimacy. In particular, we consider such identity work as a process being prompted by their direct environment, while demonstrating the gendered structural power relations in these women’s entrepreneurial contexts. We use a postfeminist lens to show how, in their quest for more legitimacy, they seem to be interpellated by postfeminist discourse. Design/methodology/approach We have used a narrative approach to show how women entrepreneurs in masculinised contexts do identity work to acquire legitimacy, and moreover use a postfeminist perspective to reflect on this identity work as to demonstrate how these Dutch businesswomen consider their agency in specific feminist terms within these men-dominated industry environments. Findings We present empirical data of ten women entrepreneurs in the Netherlands and how they discursively and subjectively make sense of their surrounding gendered contexts, in order to illustrate how local gender regimes and individual actions may conspire to constrain as well as stimulate these women’s entrepreneurship. By reflecting on three different ways of identity work through a postfeminist lens, we show how these women are interpellated by postfeminist discourses when trying to gain legitimacy. Research limitations/implications The rather small sample does not allow us to generalise our findings to the whole population of women entrepreneurs in men-dominated contexts, yet this was not our goal anyway. Practical implications Such a reflection might help policy makers and such women themselves realise how, after all, gender inequality is still persistant in the entrepreneurship field and drawing on postfeminism does not necessarily help to support these women entrepreneurs' work–life balance. Social implications Our findings underline the importance of a more gender inclusive entrepreneurship ecosystem, in which women entrepreneurs in both masculinised ánd feminised sectors are seen and treated as legitimate entrepreneurs. Originality/value Postfeminism, to our knowledge, has hardly been applied to women entrepreneurs' experiences in men-dominated environments, and is in itself still a rather new field in entrepreneurship studies.