‘Whose name's on the awning?’ Gender, entrepreneurship and the American diner

Abstract

While, in recent years, women-owned businesses have become increasingly common, entrepreneurship itself remains a deeply gendered institution, and one that is constructed through everyday practice rooted in space and place. The purpose of the present study is to explore the woman-owned diner as a distinct environment in and through which configurations of gender and entrepreneurship are mutually constituted, socially enacted, and spatially defined. Drawing upon a case study of a present-day diner in Worcester, Massachusetts, I trace the life narratives of two working-class women through their emergence as entrepreneurs in the diner industry. I reflect upon the distinctive space of the woman-owned diner as it is produced through the interaction between the gendered body-subjects of women owners, the social meaning of ‘feeding work’, and the spatial character of the diner institution. Through the gendered social practice of diner ownership, these two women have overcome substantial social, economic and geographic obstacles to their independence and worked to bridge the divide between the value of public and private work. Building on existing scholarship in the field, this study demonstrates the potential for women's agency through everyday practice as business owners, to create new spaces and alternative means of practicing both gender and entrepreneurship.

Mientras en los años recientes los negocios cuyas dueñas son mujeres se han vuelto cada vez más comunes, el emprendimiento empresarial en sí mismo sigue siendo una institución profundamente marcada por el género, una institución construida a través de la práctica cotidiana arraigada en el espacio y el lugar. El propósito del presente estudio es examinar las cafeterías en las que las propietarias son mujeres, como un ambiente distintivo en el cual y a través del cual, las configuraciones de género y de emprendimiento empresarial son mutuamente constituidas, socialmente representadas y espacialmente definidas. Basándome en el caso de una cafetería actualmente existente en Worcester, Massachussets, sigo las narrativas de vida de dos trabajadoras durante su proceso de convertirse en empresarias de la industria de la cafetería. Reflexiono sobre el espacio distintivo de la cafetería cuyas dueñas son mujeres como producto de la interacción entre los cuerpos-sujetos marcados por el género de las propietarias, el significado social del ‘trabajo de alimentar’, y el carácter espacial de la institución de la cafetería. A través de la práctica social, marcada por el género, de ser propietarias de cafeterías, estas dos mujeres han superado sustanciales obstáculos sociales, económicos y geográficos a su independencia y han trabajado para borrar la división entre el valor del trabajo público y del privado. A partir de la investigación existente en este campo, este estudio demuestra el potencial de agencia de las mujeres a través de la práctica diaria como dueñas de un negocio, para crear nuevos espacios y medios alternativos donde ejercer tanto el género como el emprendimiento empresarial.

Keywords:

• gender
• entrepreneurship
• motherhood
• diners
• feeding work

Keywords:

• género
• emprendimiento empresarial
• maternidad
• cafeterías
• trabajo de alimentar

Acknowledgements

I would like to extend a special thank you to Susan Hanson for her encouragement in the early stages of my research, as well as Megan Blake and the three anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments on initial drafts of the article. Thank you to my advisor Laurie Ross of Clark University's Community Development and Planning Program for her tireless dedication and support, and to Dave Bell for his invaluable contribution to my development as a critical researcher. I would also like to extend my appreciation to Linda Rosenlund of the Worcester Women's History Project, with whom I enjoyed many early morning French toast breakfast meetings at Annie's. And, of course, I would like to thank Wendy and Annie, in particular, for taking time out of their busy lives to share their stories with me.

Notes

 1. In a 1941 trade publication, Sam Yellin, owner of New Jersey's Stratford Diner, explained his motivations for hiring an all-female staff: ‘Women will work for less pay; women don't stay out late drinking and then call in sick the next day; women belong around food; women will work harder than men; women are always happy; women are more honest than men; women clean diners better than men; women are cleaner than men; the customers like women better; customers don't swear in front of women; more women patronize the diner’ (Gutman 1993, 132).

 2. Diner operators employed dramatic advertising techniques (e.g., signs announcing ‘Women Invited’, strategically positioned female family members in visible seats near the entrance), physical modifications (e.g., booth service, pastel color schemes, frosted windows, flower boxes) and menu changes (e.g., lighter fare, salads, and ‘kiddie’ menus) in order to ‘feminize’ their establishments and attract business from a growing consumer base of American families (Gutman 1993; Hurley 1997).

 3. Although both women are happy to have their names revealed, I choose here to only disclose their first names.

 4. See Gluck and Patai (1991) for a discussion of the use of the term ‘narrator’ in place of ‘interviewee’ in the practice of feminist oral history as a means of sharing power and showing respect for her story.

 5. Ann M. Interview by author, 5 October 2006, Worcester, MA. Audio recording and transcription.

 6. Wendy. Interview by author, 24 Oct 2006, Leicester, MA. Audio recording and transcription.

 7. While this is relatively short for a life history interview, the oral history consultant working with the Worcester Women's History Project suggested that interviews be kept to roughly one or one and a half hours, with a specific focus on one of the project's four key themes (education, work, health, and politics) in order to avoid exhausting the narrators. Rather than aiming for a full life history review, then, these interviews focused on the two women's specific experiences surrounding work, both in the home and in the paid labor market. The shorter interview format was also important out of respect for the narrators' busy schedules – particularly Annie, who works upwards of 70 hours a week in her diner with very little time to herself.

 8. Interestingly, Worcester was also home to the first diner manufacturing companies – the New England Night Lunch Wagon Company, established in 1889, and the Worcester Lunch Car and Carriage Manufacturing Company, emerging roughly a decade later (Gutman 1993, 22). This phenomenon, and Worcester's role as an early site of lunch wagon enterprises more generally, help to explain the deeply rooted ‘diner culture’ that is still evident in the city today.

 9. The diner's previous names include Mitchell's, Bove's (pronounced Bo-vay's) and Wendy's Clark Brunch, among others.

10. The national teenage pregnancy rate continued to rise, increasing 8% overall between 1982 and 1990 before beginning to decline in the mid-to-late 1990s (NCHS 2000).

11. While the US divorce rate was the highest ever observed in the 1980s, Massachusetts' 1981 rate of 3.3 divorces per 1000 population was at the lowest end of the spectrum when compared to the national rate of 5.3 per 1000 and a number of other states, including Wyoming (8.4), Alaska (8.6), and Nevada (14.4) (NCHS 1982).

12. While 63.5% of women-owned businesses in the US in 1982 did not require equity capital, family was the most commonly used source of start-up equity, at a rate of 11.7% (US Census Bureau 1987).

13. According to the 1987 Economic Censuses, 4.9% of women business owners in the US relied upon borrowed capital from family members other than their spouses to start up their businesses. This source of borrowed capital was surpassed only by the 10.5% who borrowed money through the more traditional route of commercial bank loans (US Census Bureau 1992).

14. While we can see a clearly gendered division of labor arising here (men doing prep work and women waitressing), it is important to note the ways in which, particularly Wendy talks about her work with family. According to Wendy, they all, including her husband and her father, were working for her.

15. See Hanson and Blake (2005b) for a discussion of the concept of ‘innovation’ as a gendered construct that must be repositioned to recognize the contributions of women entrepreneurs.