Discourses of women's entrepreneurship in Croatia's public policy documents

Purpose This paper critically analyses how women's entrepreneurship is discursively constructed in Croatian national policy documents. Design/methodology/approach Conceptually, this study applies a post-structuralist feminist epistemological lens in conjunction with Bacchi's (2009, 2012) conceptualisation of policy as problem representation in its analysis of the Croatian national entrepreneurship policy documents published between 2002 and 2015, with particular attention given to the two national Strategies for the Development of Women's Entrepreneurship. Analytically, the study relies on Fairclough's three-dimensional critical discourse analysis (CDA) framework (1992, 2010), which is combined with Pettersson et al.’s (2017) feminist analytical framework that guides, rather than dictates, the identification of the feminist or non-feminist, orientations within these policies. Findings The analysis reveals discourses informed by six overarching themes: (1) EU does it – we have to do it (gender equality as an externally imposed condition); (2) Empowering women entrepreneurs for economic development (women as untapped economic resources); (3) Gender-based discrimination (structural barriers acknowledged, yet depoliticised); (4) Women have two jobs (naturalising women's care responsibilities and double burden); (5) Fixing women (individualising inequality through deficit-based interventions); and (6) Gendered entrepreneurial categories (women's entrepreneurship constructed as a separate, lower-resourced institutional category). Across these discourses, the policies construct a paradoxical figure: the woman entrepreneur is simultaneously a driver of economic growth and a subject in need of improvement, while the gendered organisation of entrepreneurship itself remains unexamined. Originality/value This paper offers an original analysis of women's entrepreneurship policy in a post-socialist, EU-member state context, combining a distinct set of theoretical tools – post-structuralist feminist lens, Bacchi's approach to policy as problem representation, Fairclough's CDA, and Pettersson et al.’s feminist policy framework. Its central contribution is to show that, where gender equality enters policy primarily as an external accession requirement, the institutional compartmentalisation of women's entrepreneurship can operate as a dual mechanism of visibility and marginalisation: a dedicated women's policy track makes women entrepreneurs visible but predominantly through deficit framings and economic instrumentalisation, while relieving the mainstream policy architecture of responsibility for gender equality. Analysis of 13 mainstream policy documents alongside two dedicated women's entrepreneurship strategies reveals that the creation of separate policy for women may relieve the broader entrepreneurial architecture of any obligation to address gender equality.