Postfeminism as a Critical Concept in the Gender and Entrepreneurship Field: A Narrative Review

This book chapter examines how postfeminism as a critical concept has been used in the gender and entrepreneurship field. It considers how postfeminism has been invoked as a critical analytic device to explore the range of common sense gender assumptions that circulate around women's entrepreneurship and the consequences of an unacknowledged gendered entrepreneurial terrain. A narrative review of 22 articles which critically invoke the concept of postfeminism was undertaken focusing on the research question: how is postfeminism used in the gender and entrepreneurship literature and what effects do postfeminist analyses reveal? Three themes were identified: reconfiguration of women's entrepreneurial identities, repositioning of women within the entrepreneurship field and resistance to the postfeminist claim that entrepreneurship is good for women. Each theme is examined and explained and future research directions are considered.