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From feminism to FemInc.ism: On the uneasy relationship between feminism, entrepreneurship and the Nordic welfare state

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Abstract

Feminism in the Nordic countries was primarily formulated in terms of ‘state feminism’. The women’s movement cooperated with feminist government officials and politicians, resulting in societies that can be considered to be the most gender-equal societies in the world. Historically, the state provided for a large publicly-financed welfare sector which made it possible for many women to combine work and family through the state’s implementation of family-friendly policies, while simultaneously providing employment opportunities for many women. However, since the financial crisis of the 1990s, there has been a political change influenced by neo-liberal thought, in which politicians have handed over the welfare state’s responsibilities to the market, and, instead, the politicians have encouraged entrepreneurship, not least among women. Further to this development, there has been a change in emphasis from entrepreneurship (understood as starting and running a business) to entrepreneurialism which, in addition to a belief in the efficacy of market forces, also contains a social dimension where individuals are supposed to be flexible and exercise choice. In this article, we ask whether this entails a change in the feminist project in the Nordic countries, and if so, what the likely consequences are for this project, both in practice and in research. In order to answer this question, we reviewed existing Nordic research on women’s entrepreneurship and examined how this body of work conceptualizes entrepreneurship, gender, the state, and equality. We also considered whether any trends could be identified. We relate our findings to recent changes in government policy and conclude that the current discourse on entrepreneurship challenges, and possibly weakens, state feminism, but we also conclude that this discourse may also provide space for new forms of feminist action, in market terms. We coin the term FemInc.ism to denote feminist action through enterprise and we discuss a number of important challenges that research on this phenomenon is faced with.

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Notes

  1. A search using ‘wom*’, and ‘entrepren*’ in Google Scholar generated over 18000 hits. We soon realized that determining the relevance of the texts, or the country of origin for each text, would not be possible within the time frame of the present research.

  2. The authors have published extensively on gender and entrepreneurship since 1997, with more than 200 papers altogether. 2012–2016 they collaborate in a research project on feminist perspectives on entrepreneurship, financed by the Swedish Science foundation. See www.emblaresearch.se.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Education and Communication, Jönköping University, Box 1026, 551 11, Jönköping, Sweden

    Helene Ahl

  2. Stockholm University School of Business, Stockholm, Sweden

    Karin Berglund

  3. Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden

    Katarina Pettersson

  4. Department of Management and Engineering and Helix Vinn Excellence Centre, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

    Malin Tillmar

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  1. Helene Ahl
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  2. Karin Berglund
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  3. Katarina Pettersson
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  4. Malin Tillmar
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Correspondence to Helene Ahl.

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Ahl, H., Berglund, K., Pettersson, K. et al. From feminism to FemInc.ism: On the uneasy relationship between feminism, entrepreneurship and the Nordic welfare state. Int Entrep Manag J 12, 369–392 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11365-014-0341-4

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