Challenging Women’s Entrepreneurship: A decolonizing and antiracist approach

Entrepreneurship is increasingly held up as ‘a universal “solution”’ (Ojediran et al., 2020, p. 87) for numerous problems in the Global South and North alike. However, Calăs, Smircich, and Bourne (2009) caution that ‘the act of bringing more women to entrepreneurship is not necessarily a straightforward solution, and it may even be a distraction from real social change’ (p. 558). Race-conscious and intersectional approaches are crucial to understanding both women’s entrepreneurial activity and the conditions under which it might flourish. For example, Ferraro (2023) shows that key tensions must be accounted for between Black enterprise and capitalism as a racist institution (p. 48), as must the specificity of Indigenous women businessowners and entrepreneurial activities in other late-colonial contexts. <br/><br/>This chapter builds upon a long-standing feminist strategy to constantly question the grounds upon which we stand, to interrogate the languages and frameworks being used outside and within feminist criticism, to check in with for whom and how common terms are working, and to create new terms when needed. A review of the critical entrepreneurship literature makes clear that there is no one size fits all model for entrepreneurship. This chapter synthesizes entrepreneurship literature that incorporates Critical Race Studies, Critical Whiteness Studies, Postcolonial Studies, and perspectives that are markedly anticolonial, antiracist, feminist, and Indigenizing. This chapter suggests an approach to entrepreneurship grounded in egalitarian principles that might subsequently contradict some of the conventional business and economic development terms upon which national agendas to expand entrepreneurship are most often founded. Innovating entrepreneurship means making room for the diverse perspectives needed to solve modern social, economic, and cultural problems while creating more prosperity for all.<br/>