How research positions Central and Eastern European women entrepreneurs: A 30-year discourse analysis

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses how research on women’s entrepreneurship conducted in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) constructs and positions women entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship was illegal under the socialist regimes that governed this area and only began to develop after independence was obtained in the early 1990s. Consequently, research on entrepreneurship, including women’s entrepreneurship, is somewhat new to the region. Our discourse analysis of existing research in this area reveals that, despite different historical pathways towards entrepreneurship, normative premises that exist in Western studies on women’s entrepreneurship also prevail in scholarship produced in CEE. These normative premises impose dominant constructs and methodologies on entrepreneurship policy and the scholarly community. The discourse analysis identified five positioning constructs of women entrepreneurs, all of which stem from the assumption that women are (essentially) inadequately equipped for entrepreneurship. We discuss the discursive practices that produce these results and suggest ways forward for research on women’s entrepreneurship in CEE.

KEYWORDS:

• Discourse analyses
• woman entrepreneur
• transition economies
• Central and Eastern Europe
• literature review
• Michel Foucault

Introduction

Women’s entrepreneurship is an established research field, with almost 3000 research articles published on the subject (Cardella, Hernández-Sánchez, and Sánchez-García 2020). The field has had its own speciality journal (the International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship) since 2009. The research field has matured from descriptive studies in the 1980s, where men and women were compared against a male norm of entrepreneurship which resulted in the identification of a list of shortcomings in women entrepreneurs (Marlow 2013), to contextual studies focusing on gendered structural constraints that explain why it is more difficult for women to undertake an entrepreneurial career (Cardella, Hernández-Sánchez, and Sánchez-García 2020). However, most studies on women’s entrepreneurship are from Western, Anglo-Saxon countries that enjoy a long history of capitalism and free enterprise (Jennings and Brush 2013). The findings of these studies may thus not adequately describe women’s entrepreneurship in contexts that are informed by different histories or economic systems (Aidis et al. 2007), or social contexts that feature differently configured gender roles (Bluhm et al. 2021; Kaskla 2003). Wheadon and Duval-Couetil (2019) argue that more critical entrepreneurship research is needed. We thus respond to this call with our discourse analysis of research texts on women’s entrepreneurship in CEE.

The aim of our study is to analyse how research texts from CEE construct women’s entrepreneurship and how they position women entrepreneurs. Given that science can influence policy and practice (Ahl 2004), our research interest is to investigate whether the texts we have examined reflect an emancipatory agenda or whether they reflect the neo-conservative gender roles now present in CEE. Following the method of Foucauldian discourse analysis developed by Ahl (2007a), we investigate the underlying assumptions about women and entrepreneurship that are present in the texts by investigating the main topics studied, the theories and methodologies used, the key findings and conclusions. We also investigated how the scholarly articles position women vis-à-vis men. In the following, we present the context for our study and then detail the theoretical foundations of our analytical approach, methodology, and findings. We conclude with a discussion and suggestions for future research.

The Central and Eastern European context

Entrepreneurship is a comparatively new phenomenon in the (post-)transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) that escaped communist rule and central planning in the early 1990s.¹ Building on Western models, these countries developed democratic electoral systems, freedom of speech, a free press, and freedom of enterprise. In 2021, the proportion of entrepreneurs in CEE was comparable to that of Western Europe. Currently, there are 2.2 million women entrepreneurs in the region, 450 000 (20%) of whom employ staff (Eurostat, 2021). Women entrepreneurs comprise 10% of the 22 million women in the region’s workforce (Eurostat, 2021).

While gender equality and women’s emancipation were cornerstones of official communist ideology – women had access to higher education and professions otherwise dominated by men and labour force participation for women was the norm – they were typically tracked into lower paying jobs and had little if any participation in upper management and politics (Kaskla 2003). They were also left with the double burden of working outside the home and caring for the family (Zdravomyslova 2010). In public management, women were commonly responsible for social policies, a tradition which has continued to the present as we observe how women continue to take responsibility for social issues at all political levels in CEE.

After independence from the Soviet regime, the putative communist project of ‘women’s liberation’ was interpreted as artificial and patronizing and was considered yet another facet of communist ideology that had to be rejected. Liberation came to imply freedom for women and men to enact a conservative feminine or masculine identity and for women to retreat from paid work, thus essentially celebrating the ideal of a ‘traditional housewife’ that had long been abandoned by the West (Bluhm et al. 2021). These changes also provided systematic advantages to men. The transition to a liberal democracy and a market economy based on private property essentially entailed the restructuring of opportunities and the creation and institutionalization of a hierarchy based on market advantages. Traditional ideas concerning gender differences played a crucial role in shaping these exclusionary advantages in the new public sphere (Watson 1993). Gender inequalities were essentially reconfigured and reproduced under the new political regimes (Bluhm et al. 2021). Despite efforts to bring gender relations on an equal footing across Europe, the gender discussions in CEE were (and remain) qualitatively different. Consequently, gender equality in the region lags behind European countries (Pew Research Centre 2019) and many CEE countries have experienced a gender equality backlash (Bluhm et al. 2021). According to the latest Global Gender Gap Index prepared by the World Economic Forum, there are considerable disparities in gender equality across CEE countries (Table 1). Nine out of sixteen countries (56%) ranked lower compared to the previous evaluation despite having improved on their previous scores. This implies that there is more work to be done regarding gender equality. These countries have turned to a free-market economy, and many women have started businesses. Notwithstanding this, gender equality lags behind. From a gender equality perspective, how research constructs the role of women entrepreneurs is, therefore, of interest.

Table 1. The Global Gender Gap Index 2021 rankings of CEE countries.

Rank (1–56)*	Country	Score 0-1**	Rank change	Score change 2020	Score change 2006
8	Lithuania	0,804	25	+0,059	+0,096
19	Serbia	0,780	20	+0,044	n/a
20	Latvia	0,778	−9	−0,007	+0,069
25	Albania	0,770	−5	+0,001	+0,109
38	Bulgaria	0,746	11	+0,019	+0,059
41	Slovenia	0,741	−5	−0,002	+0,066
45	Croatia	0,733	15	+0,013	+0,019
46	Estonia	0,733	−20	−0,019	+0,038
48	Montenegro	0,732	23	+0,021	n/a
73	North Macedonia	0,715	−3	+0,004	+0,017
75	Poland	0,713	−35	−0,023	+0,033
76	Bosnia and Hercegovina	0,713	−7	−0,001	n/a
77	Slovakia	0,712	−14	−0,007	+0,036
78	Czech	0,713	0	+0,004	+0,039
88	Romania	0,700	−33	−0,024	+0,02
99	Hungary	0,068	6	+0,011	+0,019

Source: The Global Gender Gap Index 2021 rankings, World Economic Forum.

*1 is the highest rank.

** 1 is the maximum score.

Research texts as a vehicle of discourse

Building on Harding (1987), feminist research on women’s entrepreneurship (e.g. Ahl 2004; Calás, Smircich L, and Bourne 2007; Henry, Foss, and Ahl 2016) often distinguishes between three theoretical positions: (i) Liberal feminist theory views men and women as essentially similar and equally capable. Any inequalities that are identified are said to be due to direct or indirect discrimination. Research in this tradition is empiricist, usually compares men and women and their businesses, and uses quantitative methods (Göğüş, Örge, and Duygulu 2015). This theory has been criticized for not questioning received (i.e. male) business, organizational, or family norms (Calás and Smircich 2006). (ii) Social, radical, or psychoanalytical feminist theory views men and women as essentially different and states that women have distinct and different experiences from men. Feminine traits are perceived as benefits rather than drawbacks and as resources to be used constructively. This view also does not question the male norm; it merely provides an alternative or a complementary norm (Ahl 2006). (iii) Social constructionist/post-structuralist feminist theory is not interested in men and women per se but, instead, in how gender (that is, masculinity and femininity) is constructed through social interactions, and how this construction affects the social order. Gender refers to what is regarded as masculine or feminine and is independent of a person’s biological sex. Gender is a result of upbringing and social interaction and may vary in time and place. Accordingly, gender is ‘performed’ (Butler 2002). In this theory, common methods of analysis are discourse analysis and narrative analysis.

In the present study, we build on the post-structuralist perspective, according to which not only gender but also entrepreneurship is a socially constructed and discursively performed phenomenon (Burr 1995; Leeds-Hurwitz 2009; Schwandt 2003; Steyaert and Katz 2004). We view entrepreneurship, like every other social phenomenon, as something that is socially constructed and is not independent of the society it exists in (Göğüş, Örge, and Duygulu 2015; Ogbor 2000; Steyaert and Katz 2004). Thus, we pay close attention to discourses on women entrepreneurs as linguistic practices that create truth effects and contribute to the practicing of gender, and to the gendering of entrepreneurial practices (Bruni, Gherardi, and Poggio 2004b).

To this aim, we employ a Foucauldian discourse analysis, which, according to Graham (2011), differs from critical discourse theory in that it focuses less on the micro (structural/grammatical/linguistic/semiotic figures) aspects that make up a text, and more on the macro aspects of the text, i.e. what is made up by the text itself. Foucault defined discourse as practices which systematically form the object of which they speak (Foucault 1972), thus referring not only to linguistic practices or statements but also to material practices and other practices that enable certain statements and, in turn, create specific social orders (Arribas-Ayllon and Walkerdine 2008; Burr 1995). Foucault referred to the procedures that produce and control a discourse as discursive practices. In a scientific discourse, for example, these are first and foremost the assumptions that are made (sometimes stated and sometimes taken for granted and left tacit), but also prevailing material practices, including publishing traditions and research financing.

Prior entrepreneurship research that has employed a Foucauldian perspective has critiqued the gender-biased discourse of entrepreneurship and the prevailing assumptions of entrepreneurship as something unilaterally positive, steeped in monetary and economic gain (Ahl 2004; Essers et al. 2017; Ogbor 2000). In turn, these assumptions are underpinned by institutional arrangements, for example, leading journals that set agendas and determine who is given status and a voice to be heard (Lundmark, Milanov, and Seigner 2022).

As Ogbor (2000, 605) observes: ‘the concept of entrepreneurship is discriminatory, gender-biased, ethnocentrically determined and ideologically controlled, sustaining not only prevailing societal biases, but serving as a tapestry for unexamined and contradictory assumptions and knowledge about the reality of entrepreneurs’. As such, it obscures important questions about who can be considered an entrepreneur, how entrepreneurship works ideologically, how it makes people do things they would not otherwise do, and how entrepreneurship fuels inequality and perpetuates unequal power relations (Essers et al. 2017).

In her discourse analysis of research on women’s entrepreneurship published between 1982 and 2000, Ahl (2004) identified several discursive practices that coalesced in positioning women as secondary to men. These practices include (i) assumptions of growth and economic performance as the purpose of entrepreneurship; (ii) assumptions that men and women are essentially different; (iii) assumptions of work and family as separate spheres (and family as the women’s responsibility); and (iv) the assumption that entrepreneurship is an individual undertaking. These discursive practices led to male/female comparative studies that largely ignored contextual factors where, in which women came out on the losing side. The result was aggravated by other discursive practices the influence of the field’s founding scholars and foundational texts, writing and publishing practices, and financing for entrepreneurship research, all of which upheld and supported the assumptions mentioned above.

More recent research has challenged dominant assumptions in the field, such as Essers et al. (2017), who render non-traditional entrepreneurship and usually overshadowed aspects of ‘traditional’ entrepreneurship visible, or research on how women entrepreneurs navigate deeply patriarchal landscapes (Al‐dajani et al. 2015; Alkhaled 2021). Discourse analyses of entrepreneurship policies show how neo-liberal policies for women’s entrepreneurship recreate their subordinate position (Ahl and Nelson 2015; Ahl and Marlow 2021; Berglund et al. 2018). Analyses of media representations of women entrepreneurs demonstrate how they are positioned as secondary to men (Achtenhagen and Welter 2011) and an analysis of an entrepreneurship teaching case shows how women are rendered invisible (Ahl 2007b). Marlow and McAdam (2013) show how even statistics are constructed to misrepresent women as ‘under-performing’ when, in fact, their performance is on a par with men in the same line of business.

Methodology

Selection process

We performed a literature search of international, peer-reviewed articles in the Scopus and Web of Science core collection databases. The search terms for each database were based on two main search concepts: (i) ‘women’s entrepreneurship and (ii) ‘Central and Eastern Europe’. Search terms related to ‘transition economies’ were added to the geographical search concept. In total, we used 95 search terms, as detailed in Appendix 1. Our search interrogated titles, abstracts, and keywords. To ensure that we did not omit any relevant texts, we included the following document types:

• Scopus: articles, book chapters, reviews, conference papers, and books

• The Web of Science: articles, early access papers, proceedings papers, and review articles

Only publications written in English were considered in our search, which delivered 225 results. The titles and abstracts of every article (and, if necessary, the entire text) were analysed to determine whether they actually dealt with women’s entrepreneurship in CEE. The process resulted in the rejection of 143 articles. Using our prior knowledge of the field and by examining the references of the selected papers, we added another 40 articles to our collection, resulting in 122 papers in total. The inclusion and exclusion process is detailed in the PRISMA flow diagram in Figure 1.

Figure 1. PRISMA flow diagram.

Description of the selected papers

Our analysis covers publications from the entire period of CEE independence, from 1991 to 2021. Five papers were published during the first decade, 26 during the second decade, and 91 during the third. 82% of the 247 unique authors (203 authors) wrote only one study. Twenty-nine authors produced two papers, and nine published three or more. The papers that we reviewed cover every CEE country, with Poland (27 papers) and the Czech Republic (15) being the most frequently studied countries. 12% of the papers originate from two books: Female Entrepreneurship in Transition Economies and Women’s Entrepreneurship in Former Yugoslavia – both originating from countries that lie outside of CEE. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice published one paper, as did the Journal of Small Business Management. The rest of the papers originate from so-called ‘low impact’ regional journals. Appendix 2 provides a complete reference list of the selected papers.

Analysis method

In Ahl’s (2007a) reading of Foucault (1972), foremost of the discursive practices that shape a discourse are its underlying assumptions. These assumptions are sometimes stated, sometimes not, but they can be identified by analysing other discursive practices. The other discursive practices deemed relevant to the present analysis include the founding scholars and foundational texts related to women’s entrepreneurship, as reflected in how the authors of the papers we examined argue for the importance of these texts; ontological and epistemological premises; research questions and hypotheses; and preferred theories and research methods. Attention must also be given to that which the discourse excludes. Writing and publishing practices, rules and rituals pertaining to who is allowed to speak, and institutional support for entrepreneurship research also shape a scientific discourse but lie outside the scope of the present analysis

The underlying assumptions will determine how a research text positions women entrepreneurs. Accordingly, we performed our analysis in two steps, the findings of which we report on in two sections. The first section identifies six underlying assumptions that emerge through an analysis of the discursive practices in the reviewed articles. The first section also discusses that which is excluded. In the second section, we show how the texts position women entrepreneurs and how this reflects the underlying assumptions.

Step one

Following Ahl’s (2007a), we created a reading guide that contained 18 general categories (see Table 2). These categories were further divided into relevant subcategories as our reading proceeded. We read and critically analysed each paper at least twice. Each item of the reading guide was subsequently noted in a separate word document. The items were then coded, and the codes (such as ‘LV’ for Latvia, ‘EG’ for economic growth, or ‘MR’ for multiple regression) for each article were entered into an Excel spreadsheet, with one line for each article and the codes in the columns. This arrangement enabled us to count and compare the findings across the articles and interpret the results using a discourse analytical framework. Many of the practices, for example, the preferred research methods were best analysed by searching for patterns and characteristics in the material by means of a quantitative and qualitative content analysis (Polit and Beck 2020). We compiled frequency tables for each item in the reading guide and then used these frequencies to draw qualitative inferences about discursive practices. For example, we noted that quantitative survey studies dominated our sample, and we thus drew specific conclusions regarding the ontological and epistemological views these methods represented.

Table 2. Reading guide categories.

1.	Article title
2.	Author(s)
3.	Year of publication
4.	Publication outlet
5.	Reason for study
6.	Research question
7.	Feminist theories
8.	Theoretical bases
9.	Hypothesis
10.	Methodological approach
11.	Analysis method
12.	Sample
13.	Key findings
14.	Practical or policy implications
15.	Implications for future research
16.	Contribution
17.	Positioning of the woman entrepreneur
18.	Notes

Source: Authors.

Most of the points in the reading guide are self-explanatory. Point 5 (reason for study) refers to the reason why the authors considered a particular research problem important and worth researching. To identify the content of this point, we performed a detailed, genre-specific argumentation analysis of the introduction sections (Ahl 2007a; Swales 1990). According to Swales (1990), introductions in scientific research articles almost always follow the same three-step procedure: (i) establish a territory by claiming the centrality or the importance of the research area; (ii) establish a niche by indicating a research gap, making a counterclaim, or raising a question (or indicating the continuance of a research tradition); and (iii) occupy the niche by presenting the study or its purpose, or by announcing the principal findings. We analysed and noted down these three steps in each introduction, comparing our observations across all of the articles in our sample. Point 7 (feminist theories) refers to whether the authors used a feminist theory, and if so, which one. Following previous authors, we looked for references to liberal, social, or post-structuralist feminist theory (Ahl 2004; Henry, Foss, and Ahl 2016; Neergaard, Frederiksen, and Marlow 2011).

Step 2

To identify how the researcher(s) positioned women entrepreneurs (Point 17 in the reading guide), we read each article for explicit statements about women (or men). These statements included remarks about their characteristics, their problems or opportunities, benefits or shortcomings, and recommendations. In most cases, these remarks were found in the introductory or conclusion sections or in the sections on practical or policy implications (Point 14), which furthered our understanding of the positioning of the woman entrepreneur. For example, if an article suggested ‘confidence training’ for women, we interpreted it to indicate that the authors found women lacking in confidence. We found 161 statements which we noted down (Point 18, notes) and compared across the articles. We grouped the statements into five categories and then associated each article with one (or, in some cases, more than one) of these categories. By analysing and comparing the selected statements about women and men and their businesses, we identified five ways women entrepreneurs were positioned.

The findings section below describes each identified underlying assumption and discusses what the assumptions exclude. We then show how these assumptions position women entrepreneurs.

Findings

Step one: six underlying assumptions

1: economic growth as the purpose and measure of entrepreneurship

Our analysis of how the authors argued for the importance of their research in the introduction and conclusion sections of their papers revealed that the most common reason for doing research on women entrepreneurs was to further economic growth. 87% of the analysed papers stated this as the primary research motif. For example, Kot, Meyer, and Broniszewska (2016) argue that the promotion of entrepreneurship is vital for improved and sustained economic growth. Likewise, Vodă et al. (2020) consider entrepreneurship vital to economic growth, innovation, and job creation.

The dominance of the motifs of economic growth and business performance reflects the sentiments of the foundational texts of the field, including Schumpeter’s (1934) Theory of economic development (see Ahl 2004, 37–62 for an overview of foundational texts in this field). The central rationale of developing knowledge to further economic growth is often followed by claiming a research gap, for example, how little research has focused on women’s entrepreneurship to date in the context of transitioning countries or that women entrepreneurs and their actual or potential contribution to economic growth is a new phenomenon about which little is known.

Largely excluded in the papers we examined were issues of gender equality. The papers excluded any meaningful discussion of the subordination of women. Whilst women’s socioeconomic status was cited as a reason for the research (11% of the articles employed this strategy), none of the papers we studied referred to issues of gender equality as the main reason why they had studied women’s entrepreneurship. On the contrary, it was claimed by the authors that gender equality has been achieved (e.g. Palalić et al. 2020) and that women must now respond accordingly and avail themselves of the opportunities that lie before them (Fosić, Kristić, and Ana 2017; Rebernik and Tominc 2006; Zarina & Begec, 2014). Such arguments essentially reflect the neo-liberal, post-feminist stance that is also seen in the West. These arguments are presented despite research results showing how neo-liberal policies for women’s entrepreneurship recreate the subordinate position of women (Ahl and Nelson 2015; Ahl and Marlow 2021; Berglund et al. 2018).

The assumption that economic growth is the purpose and measure of entrepreneurship is not questioned. Growth is assumed as unequivocally good and desirable, and women become a means to this goal – the more women entrepreneurs, the better. We observe that this assumption excludes studies in which gender equality is the primary motivation, and it excludes studies that take a critical perspective on economic growth through women’s entrepreneurship. Note, too, that this assumption may have a dark side, including the observation that women’s entrepreneurship may involve dangerous work and may lead to a poverty trap.

2: individualism

Most of the papers which we reviewed focus on the individual entrepreneur. Almost half of them (48%) are purely descriptive and aimed at presenting an objective, illustrative profile of women in business. The authors researched aspects such as the demographic profiles of women entrepreneurs, their main business sectors, motivational factors, the challenges and barriers women face, or differences in these characteristics across different geographical contexts. Consequently, the results of these studies are reported in terms of the entrepreneur’s personal characteristics, family status, motives for starting a business, business characteristics (including size and revenue), management problems in starting or running a business, self-perceived required competencies, and perceptions of success, barriers, and challenges.

While most of the studies focused on the individual entrepreneur, some did consider contextual influences (e.g.Širec and Močnik 2012; Startiene and Remeikiene 2008; Welter and Kolb 2006; Welter and Smallbone 2010; Aidis et al. 2007). Nevertheless, and irrespective of the research question, the practical and policy implications centred mainly on improving and enhancing the competitiveness of the individual woman entrepreneur. Entrepreneurial achievement was thought to be explained by individual behaviour, with a few exceptions (e.g. Andrejuk 2018; Welter and Smallbone 2010). Largely excluded were discussions of the impact of gendered social orders or of ‘entrepreneurship as a collective undertaking’. Despite the country-specific focus of the articles, we found surprisingly little discussion of the contextual circumstances specific to Central and Eastern Europe. In particular, there was little discussion of the specific post-Soviet context in terms of limited resources and limited entrepreneurial skills and the practices that women entrepreneurs utilized to adapt to these limitations.

3: essentialist view of gender

The large number of exploratory and descriptive papers included in our sample correlates with the large number of papers that did not provide an explicit statement of their theoretical basis. In our sample, 37% of the articles used no specific theory and 22% of the papers used secondary data from national and international statistics databases, GEM, or OECD data. A very large number of papers (67%) did not present any specific hypotheses, further reinforcing the dominance of descriptive work.

Quantitative research methods (62%) dominated the papers we studied, followed by qualitative methods (34%, of which 61% were desk-research), and mixed methods (5%). The most typical method to gather data was to use a survey, which was used in 67% of the papers. The rest of the papers used secondary data. The most popular method of analysis was to use descriptive statistics, as used in 32% of the papers, whilst regression analysis was used in 19% of the papers.

These methods typically rely on an objectivist ontology and a positivist epistemology. It is taken for granted that received positivist research methods will provide objective knowledge about men or women. Methods based on a social constructionist epistemology such as narrative analysis, discourse analysis, or identity analysis were lacking in the papers we examined. Accordingly, the studies tended to hold an essentialist view of gender.

An essentialist view of gender is also reflected in the use (if any) of feminist theory. Most of the papers (84%) did not refer to any feminist theory and treated gender as a dichotomous variable. An implicit use of liberal feminism could be inferred in 7% of the papers. These investigated barriers to women’s entrepreneurship, for example, unequal access to resources, or the influence of regulations (e.g. Aidis et al. 2007; Manolova et al. 2006.), and some mentioned that gendered institutions explained women’s unequal access to resources and their lower performance. We also found an implicit use of social feminism in a few papers (2% of the total sample) that examined, for example, how women’s socialization impacted their preferences, performance beliefs, strategic choices, or advancement (e.g. Manolova et al. 2007; Aidis et al. 2007). However, note that both liberal and social feminism hold essentialist assumptions of gender. Whilst the former does not question existing structures (but advises women to adapt), the latter reinforces gender stereotypes. With a few notable exceptions (e.g. Möller 2012; Křížková, Jurik, and Dlouhá 2014), a social constructionist or post-structuralist feminist theory focusing on gender and power orders was absent. Nor did we find any other version of feminist theory. The view of women and feminism, as presented in the papers, is thus consistent with an essentialist understanding of gender.

An essentialist view of gender excludes studies of the social construction of gender and its power implications. For example, studies of how the Soviet legacy, in terms of gendered values, practices, and preferences, affected the gender order are not present in the reviewed articles. In the next section, we show how many of the papers view women’s entrepreneurship as a solution to social problems of various kinds. This approach presents women’s entrepreneurship as a ‘new’ solution. However, this can be traced back to the Soviet tradition of holding women responsible for solving social problems at all levels. Consequently, this putative responsibility may persist in the entrepreneurship discourse, this time dissembled in terms of market solutions, but without challenging the patriarchal gender order.

4: men and women as different

An essentialist understanding of gender usually implies that men and women are different and that behaviour, preferences or attitudes can be explained by referring to a person’s gender. The second most popular research question in the papers we reviewed addressed whether women entrepreneurs differ from their male counterparts (17% of the papers). An even larger proportion of the papers (71%) compared male and female entrepreneurs, even in cases where the paper’s primary research question did not concern gender differences. In the papers that did focus on gender differences, some of the factors that were studied included growth expectancies (Manolova et al. 2007), risk propensity (Yordanova and Alexandrova-Boshnakova 2011), opportunity identification (Kedmenec, Tominc, and Rebernik 2014), and psychological motivation factors and social capital categories (Širec and Močnik 2012).

The majority of the papers that focused on gender differences were able to identify several gender differences. For example, according to Manolova et al. (2006), men make better use of their social networks to secure sources of external financing. According to Vodă and Florea (2019), gender influences a person’s intention of opening a business in the future, with men being more inclined to do so than women. At the same time, although statistically significant, these differences were small and could not reasonably justify the claim that men and women are fundamentally different regarding entrepreneurship. For example, Betáková, Okręglicka, and Havierniková (2021) found that on a 7-point Likert scale, men scored 0.286 higher than women with respect to ‘competitive aggressiveness’. The difference may be statistically significant but not necessarily significant.

The assumption that men and women are different from each other, in combination with an essentialist understanding of gender, excludes studies of the social construction of gender and studies of within-sex variation. When gender stereotypes were acknowledged in the papers, the proposed solutions were not to challenge them but for women to develop appropriate strategies and skills to deal with them (Lituchy, Reavley, and Bryer 2003). Whether these results have something to do with the current neo-conservative gender order is an interesting hypothesis, especially the neo-conservative’s uneasiness with anything associated with the word gender in many CEE countries. However, this issue was not discussed in any of the papers.

5: a male entrepreneurship norm

In contrast to the descriptive papers, the papers comparing men and women had men-women comparative papers had hypotheses. The hypotheses were usually formulated in a way that implied that women are inferior to men in terms of the necessary qualities, skills, and personal characteristics for successful entrepreneurship. For example, Yordanova and Alexandrova-Boshnakova (2011) hypothesized that women are less likely to exhibit high-risk behaviour than men. Interestingly, the results of these studies often contradicted the hypotheses that were proposed; for example, female entrepreneur respondents scored better than males in several studies. According to Janovac et al. (2021), companies that were owned by women incurred losses less frequently than male-owned businesses. Furthermore, they observed that women’s businesses had significantly lower debt rates than those owned by men. Despite these findings, it was consistently hypothesized that men would score better than women. We observed very little development of research questions or hypotheses over the 30-year period that we studied. During the last decade, most of the papers remain descriptive profile studies (42%) or studies of gender differences (against the backdrop of a male norm) (16%). Whilst 17% of the papers addressed barriers to women’s entrepreneurship, the discussion of said barriers was somewhat limited. For example, discussion of structural barriers caused by fundamental inequalities that result in everyday obstacles for women entrepreneurs, such as limited access to capital or childcare or an unequal division of household responsibilities, was largely absent.

The male entrepreneurship norm, in combination with individualist and essentialist assumptions (and the growth imperative), thus excludes studies in which gendered contextual factors (instead of a person’s gender) explain entrepreneurial achievement and it also excludes studies where entrepreneurial achievement is considered to be something other than economic performance or growth.

6 : division of work and family

Family obligations and childcare responsibilities were often mentioned in the papers as the main barriers to the development of women’s entrepreneurship in conjunction with the challenge of finding a balance between work and family (e.g. Herman and Szabo 2015; Welsh, Kaciak, and Thongpapanl 2016). Papers noted that since women are the primary caretakers of the family and home, the flexibility in work-time that is offered by entrepreneurship is one reason why women engage in entrepreneurship (Herman and Szabo 2015; Ivanović-Đukić and Petković 2020). It was suggested in several papers that starting a business was a way for women to balance their work and family commitments (e.g. Sadiku-Dushi et al. 2020; Zapalska 1997).

Whilst family responsibilities were acknowledged as constituting obstacles for women’s entrepreneurship, with a few exceptions (Křížková, Jurik, and Dlouhá 2014), the papers offered no suggestions with regards to changing gendered social structures, such as gendered divisions of unpaid work, shared parental leave, or access to day-care. Additionally, there was no questioning of the idea that family obligations are a woman’s responsibility. Suggestions for policy changes (found in 61% of the papers) were very general, not context-specific, and focused on individual women instead of overarching social structures. Again, the suggestions that were made in the papers did not question the assumption that family responsibilities are a woman’s job. Instead, the suggestions concerned improving access to finance (e.g. Stošic Panić 2017; Welsh, Kaciak, and Thongpapanl 2016), encouraging the establishment of professional and alumni networks (e.g. Manolova et al. 2007; Širec and Močnik 2012), or developing mentoring and education programs (e.g. Bliss and Garratt 2001; Tominc and Rebernik 2004). Note that all of these suggestions concern (putative) improvements within existing structures. In summary, these suggestions remain in line with policy recommendations found in research on women’s entrepreneurship originating in the West (Foss, Henry, and Mikalsen 2019). Recommendations for future research called for ‘more of the same’, for example, replicating the study in other countries (e.g. Jones et al. 2008; Kot, Meyer, and Broniszewska 2016), increasing the sample size (e.g. Manolova et al. 2007; Pupavac 2011), or conducting a follow-up study, by, for example, including additional factors (e.g. Kedmenec, Tominc, and Rebernik 2014; Yordanova 2009). These recommendations were of a general nature, and suggestions for critical feminist studies that question the gendering of social orders were largely absent.

The assumptions that there is a strict division between work and family and that ‘family’ is a woman’s responsibility exclude studies that question and challenge existing gendered social structures. This may include studies on a husband’s participation (or lack thereof) in household work and childcare or studies on the interface between a country’s parental leave policies and the provision (or lack thereof) of public childcare (e.g. Naldi et al. 2019). The latter area of investigation is of particular interest since some CEE countries have limited their provision of free public childcare and after-school activities, possibly affecting opportunities for women to take up full-time employment. Such a circumstance may force women to turn to entrepreneurship instead.

Table 3 summarizes the discussion of the reviewed papers thus far. It lists the discursive practices that we identified and the corresponding underlying assumptions. The third column summarizes that which is excluded.

Table 3. Discursive practices, assumptions, and exclusions in the reviewed articles.

Discursive practices in the reviewed articles	Underlying assumption	Excluded
Economic growth as the motivation for doing research on women entrepreneurs	1. Economic growth as the purpose and measure of entrepreneurship	Studies in which gender equality is the reason for research
Studies of individual behaviour or characteristics as explaining entrepreneurship	2. Individualism	Studies of gendered social orders and contexts; studies of entrepreneurship as a collective effort
Objectivist ontology and positivist epistemology reflected in: Descriptive, a-theoretical work Quantitative methods Absence of feminist analysis	3. An essentialist view of gender	Studies of the social construction of gender and its power implications
Comparative studies on gender differences	4. Men and women are viewed as different	Studies of the social construction of gender; studies of within-sex variation
The hypothesis that women score lower than men for factors associated with entrepreneurship	5. A male entrepreneurship norm	Studies in which contextual factors instead of gender explain entrepreneurial achievement
The hypothesis that family responsibilities explain why women achieve less as entrepreneurs compared to men	6. Division of work and family	Studies that question gendered structures

Source:Authors.

Step 2: Positioning the woman entrepreneur

In the previous section, we identified six underlying assumptions that inform the discourse on women’s entrepreneurship in the reviewed papers. In this section, we show how these assumptions affect the positioning of the woman entrepreneur (in terms of a ‘positioning construct’). By analysing and comparing statements about women and men and their businesses in the reviewed texts, we identified and labelled five different ways in which the woman entrepreneur was positioned (see Table 4). In the following discussion, we present each positioning construct and argue how each construct reflects one or more of the underlying assumptions identified above.

Table 4. Five ways of positioning the woman entrepreneur.

	Positioning construct	Frequency*	Underlying assumptions
I	An (untapped) economic resource	54%	Growth, Individualism
II	A casualty of a gendered industrial culture	28%	Individualism, Male norm
III	Lacking skills relevant to entrepreneurship	16%	Individualism, Essentialism, Male/female difference, Male norm
IV	A solution to social problems	8%	Individualism, Essentialism, Work/family division
V	In need of encouragement	6%	Individualism, Essentialism, Male/female difference, Male norm

Source: Authors.

*In some articles, women were positioned in more than one way, for example, as an untapped economic resource that need encouragement and as a solution to social problems. Consequently, the sum of the percentages listed in the table exceeds 100%.

Positioning Construct I – an (untapped) economic resource

The most common way women entrepreneurs were positioned in the reviewed papers was to view them as a resource for economic growth or a tool that can facilitate economic prosperity.

Research indicates that in the fast-growing sector of individual and collective entrepreneurship, women may hold the key to advancing the slowing global economies

(Kot, Meyer, and Broniszewska 2016, 207).

More than half of the articles positioned women in this manner as they argued for the necessity of research into women’s entrepreneurship. They claimed that women entrepreneurs are necessary for economic growth or that women are an unexploited resource for entrepreneurship.

Women entrepreneurs are seen as the new promoters of growth and development, playing a crucial role in emerging countries (Stefan et al. 2021, 2).

Several authors stated that businesses have or should have a substantial impact on the economy in terms of increased jobs, sales, innovation, and economic growth and renewal.

It is widely recognized that women’s entrepreneurship presents valuable potential, but is not sufficiently explored. Women entrepreneurs have been designated as the new engines for growth and the rising stars of the economies

(Herman and Szabo 2015, 129).

The first positioning construct (‘women entrepreneurs as an (untapped) economic resource’) thus reflects the basic assumption that the purpose of entrepreneurship is economic growth, and it also reflects the assumption of individualism – economic growth is to be achieved by individual action.

Positioning Construct II – a casualty of a gendered industrial culture

The second positioning, where women are viewed as casualties of a gendered industrial culture, explains women’s lower entrepreneurship rates compared to their male counterparts by an industrial social and economic order which discriminates against women and creates gender inequalities with regard to women’s access to the resources necessary for entrepreneurship.

Women find it difficult to start and maintain a successful firm because of the existence of environments where formidable barriers exist

(Sequeira, Gibbs, and Juma 2016, 1650001–2).

Inequalities manifest themselves in gendered social orders, gender stereotypes, and traditional gender norms for women and men.

Low amount of female entrepreneurs is not because of a lack of education and skills, but might instead be caused by other reasons such as stereotypes, lack of access to capital and information and family obligations

(Rugina 2019, 70).

The second positioning construct aligns with liberal feminist theory. When a woman entrepreneur fails to achieve the same level of success as a male entrepreneur, this is explained by the fact that women have been subject to discrimination or structural barriers. Note that it is assumed that they would perform on par with men if such barriers were eliminated. The male entrepreneurship norm and the premise of individualism are taken for granted. What follows from this is that women are asked to ‘measure up’ once the barriers are dealt with. The studies that position women entrepreneurs as ‘casualties of a gendered industrial culture’ do not address the stereotypical images of an entrepreneur as male and the family caretaker as female. Instead, these studies offer general policy recommendations to promote female role models, entrepreneurship policies that are more attuned to a woman’s needs, or professional and alumni networks for women entrepreneurs.

Positioning Construct III - Lacking skills relevant to entrepreneurship

The third positioning construct that we found is based on the assertion that women lack the necessary skills, resources, professional experience, and social networks to become successful entrepreneurs.

Although male and female entrepreneurs exhibit similar levels of education, female entrepreneurs may lack the appropriate type of education and prior experience

(Yordanova 2009, 572).

Women also more often find themselves in situations in which they feel powerless to control the outcome

(Širec and Močnik 2012, 26).

This type of assertion was often followed by advice that women should improve their skills. If women follow this advice, then they will become entrepreneurs or will become better entrepreneurs.

Our research shows that women possess on average lower levels of resources, which explains their lower opportunity identification prevalence. Results show that the increase in resources, especially in the area of human capital consisting of skills, knowledge, and experiences for entrepreneurship, has a significant and positive effect on opportunity identification among women

(Kedmenec, Tominc, and Rebernik 2014, 366).

The claim that women lack the necessary skills to be successful entrepreneurs reflects several of the assumptions that we identified in our review of the papers, for example, an essentialist understanding of gender, a male entrepreneurship norm, men and women viewed as different, and individualism. We see traces of liberal feminist thought in this claim, too, including the assertion that women have been subject to discrimination resulting in a lack of access to entrepreneurship education. This line of research implies that if only the necessary education and training were provided to women, they would become successful entrepreneurs. The recommendations that are made in studies of this type do not address socially constructed gendered assumptions regarding entrepreneurship, family, or womanhood, however.

Positioning Construct IV – a solution to social problems

Several researchers assert that women’s entrepreneurship is vital in transition economies since women entrepreneurs can solve social problems, including the problems that women themselves face. It is supposed by these researchers that women entrepreneurs will create jobs for other women, improve the social, educational, and health status of women, and enhance the lives and well-being of their families.

Development of entrepreneurship by women has been a major step to increase female participation in the process of economic development, providing employment opportunities and improving their economic independence, social, educational and health status as well as their families’ lives

(Zapalska and Brozik 2014, 7).

In addition, some authors claim that women’s entrepreneurship will solve the problems of growing unemployment and social exclusion and will positively impact structural changes and demographic problems.

Women’s occupational activity also translates into an increase in income and, hence, in the well-being of households. The increase in the professional activity of women is additionally gaining importance in the context of the forecasted demographic changes, including in particular the decreasing number of people of working age in Europe, and especially in Poland, and the expected increase in average life expectancy

(Siemieniak 2020, 201).

Entrepreneurship was also suggested as a practical solution to women’s ‘double burden’, making it possible for women to combine work and household responsibilities successfully.

Private firms give women the chance to balance their work and family responsibilities, while at the same time helping them improve family welfare and social cohesion […] Owning a small business may help in increasing women’s autonomy and provides them the opportunity to have a more active and representative role in the country’s economic and political life

(Sadiku-Dushi et al., 2020, p 64).

This fourth construct reflects individualist and essentialist assumptions. It also reproduces the assumption of work and family as separate spheres of life and that women are the primary family carers. This construct does not question whether gendered structures are the cause of social problems. Instead, it pushes responsibility onto women, who are expected to deal with social problems. Women’s (but not men’s) entrepreneurship is thus put forward as a ‘cure-all’; a ready remedy for social and economic problems.

Positioning Construct V – In need of encouragement

The fifth positioning construct claims that women entrepreneurs are simply misinformed or neglected, which is the main reason why their average rate of entrepreneurial activity is much lower than that of men.

The promotion of greater gender equality in the labour market is achieved through a combination of legislation, policy guidelines and financial support. One of the factors enabling the reduction of gender inequality is to indicate entrepreneurship as an opportunity for every woman

(Siemieniak 2020, 195).

It is claimed that women just lack encouragement. If they were only informed that entrepreneurship is an opportunity for them as well, and if they were only encouraged and supported more, then they would become entrepreneurs.

Women are widely regarded as potential entrepreneurs and if encouraged and supported more than now they could become a powerful economic force in the state

(Pupavac 2011, 208).

Underlying this positioning construct is the assumption that entrepreneurship requires qualities associated with men, including independence, decisiveness and assertiveness. Women are often associated with the opposite qualities: dependence, indecisiveness, and a feeling of being unsure. Apparently, from this perspective, women need to be encouraged and supported if they are to assume an entrepreneurship role. Assumptions of individualism, essentialism, men and women as different, and the male entrepreneurship norm are present in this positioning construct. This perspective further cements gendered role expectations, leaving women to deal with the tension between womanhood and entrepreneurship, a scenario that may negatively impact women’s self-efficacy. We also note that this perspective fails to question gendered structures.

Discussion

The literature we have examined for this study positions women entrepreneurs in CEE as useful in pursuing several good things, for example, as a vehicle for economic growth or a solution to different social problems. However, she is simultaneously viewed as essentially inadequate for such purposes since she lacks the necessary skills and requires more encouragement. Alternatively, she is portrayed as a victim, a casualty of a gendered industrial culture – in many cases, without an analysis of the underlying structural reasons for her subordinated position in society. The onus is placed on individual women to improve themselves, while discussions on structural change or discussions of gender equality (that go beyond seeing women’s smaller share of business ownership as a problem) are largely absent. The research on women’s entrepreneurship in CEE thus applies the same discriminatory, gender-based, ethnocentric concept of entrepreneurship found in mainstream studies in the West (Ogbor 2000; Essers et al. 2017).

There is no reason to think that this was intentional on the authors’ part. In fact, we observe the opposite to be true; many of the papers included in this study showed a sincere interest in paying tribute to women entrepreneurs. It is the assumptions governing the research field that position women entrepreneurs as secondary (Foucault 1972). We identified the following underlying assumptions in the discourse on women’s entrepreneurship in CEE.

First, we acknowledge that the underlying assumptions made in the foundational scholarly texts in the field of entrepreneurship (Ahl 2004; Hébert and Link 1988; Schumpeter 1934) are very much present and have consequently informed subsequent research. First among these is the assumption of economic growth as the purpose and measure of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is seen as a for-profit economic activity whose individual purpose is to enrich the entrepreneur and whose societal function is to create economic growth. This assumption was clearly reflected in many of the reviewed papers, a large majority of which cited women’s actual or potential contribution to economic growth as the reason for why the author(s) conducted their research. However, we note that this assumption excludes gender equality as the (potential) main reason for their research, and consequently, gender equality was not present in the papers we reviewed.

A second assumption was that entrepreneurial achievement is an individual undertaking, as seen in the many papers that focused on individual entrepreneurial effort. To some extent, this assumption has been abandoned in contemporary entrepreneurship research, although it remains (with some notable exceptions) the norm in the collection of papers included in the present study.

Quantitative research methods informed by a positivist ontology and epistemology dominated the papers, which reflects the third assumption, namely, an essentialist view on gender. An essentialist view on gender entails that certain traits are seen as ‘feminine’ and others as ‘masculine’ and that these traits directly map onto female and male bodies. This view is consistent with the fourth assumption, that men and women are different, as can be seen in the descriptive studies that attempted to identify the typical entrepreneurial woman’s characteristics and in the explanatory studies that compared men and women.

The explanatory studies included in our sample reflected the fifth assumption, the male entrepreneurship norm, as seen in the analysis of the hypotheses in the explanatory articles. Women entrepreneurs were measured against the growth norm and against male-gendered ‘entrepreneurial’ characteristics, most often without contextual factors being taken into consideration. In these comparisons, the woman entrepreneur tends to come out on the losing end, which is then constructed either as a problem (she does not perform well enough) or as an opportunity (if we could only make her perform better for the benefit of the economy). The resulting policy and practice implications are that women must improve their skills and attitudes, and that policy can possibly help them do this by taking gender into account when designing support programs. Again, the message that is put forward here is that women need to change, not the structures surrounding them.

The sixth and final assumption that we identified is the division of work and family. The papers we examined presented the work/family conflict as a barrier to women’s success but did not offer any policy advice for alleviating this (e.g. mandating shared parental leave), instead suggesting that women start a business so they can balance their work and family responsibilities.

The assumptions we identified construct women as inferior at the very inception of the research process. No explicit feminist analysis was present, and, with a few exceptions, the papers focused on the attitudes, traits, dispositions, motivation, and challenges among individual women, thus attributing any problem to individual shortcomings rather than structures.

The underlying assumptions exclude alternative ways of studying women’s entrepreneurship. As Table 3 shows, the discourse largely excludes studies where gender equality is the primary focus (and not just a taken for granted effect of increased entrepreneurship among women), and it excludes studies of the effects on women’s entrepreneurship of gendered social orders, structures, and contexts. The collected papers mentioned the existence of inequalities without providing any feminist analysis of said inequalities. This approach resembles Soviet-era practices when inequalities were acknowledged but not discussed or addressed.

To a large degree, the findings made in the collection of CEE papers mirror those made in Ahl’s (2004) discourse analysis of international (primarily Anglo-Saxon) articles published between 1982 and 2000. This observation is surprising, given the critical differences in institutional environments. The approach adopted in the CEE papers may be a result of CEE scholarship uncritically importing Western entrepreneurship constructs, or it might be explained by the presence of similar gender inequalities and deeply structured processes of female subordination in capitalist, command, and transition economies (Yordanova 2009).

It is also surprising that the CEE papers reflect this approach, given how the field of women’s entrepreneurship studies has developed since the fall of the Soviet Union, as discussed in the introduction. Contemporary work on women’s entrepreneurship published in leading journals is often both feminist and critical, but the research that we reviewed from CEE did not reflect this development. This may be attributed to the fact that the reviewed research is still in its early phase. In order to theorize about something, the phenomenon must first be mapped and described, which may explain why the papers we reviewed included so many profile studies. Alternatively, the CEE authors were still in the process of adapting to mainstream publishing practices. Academic writing and publishing practices have, if anything, become even more geared towards a ‘publish-or-perish’ approach that favours research that follows the established traditions in a field (Ahl 2004). Institutional support, in terms of financing for entrepreneurship research, still focuses on issues of ‘performance’ and ‘economic growth’, thus reinforcing the status quo of the construction that the woman entrepreneur is inferior to a male entrepreneur. The marginalized position of women entrepreneurs is ignored, resulting in the continuation of patriarchal biases and undermining the relevance of the research (Nadin 2007). Consequently, we argue that there is room for further development of research on women’s entrepreneurship in CEE, a topic which we explore in the following section.

Suggestions for future research

If research is to avoid positioning women as secondary (to men), then we advise that researchers challenge the assumptions and discursive practices outlined above. Information concerning how one might go about challenging these can be obtained from contemporary post-structuralist feminist approaches to women’s entrepreneurship. In the discussion that follows, we provide several references to such scholarship.

First, scholars should abandon the individualist assumption and the economic growth imperative. Business ownership has many reasons and functions (Hytti 2005; Nadin 2007), and is often a collective endeavour that is sometimes informed by social goals instead of economic goals. For example, business ownership might even be a form of political activism (Alkhaled 2021). In general, entrepreneurship is a rich and multi-coloured tapestry. Research should highlight the complexities inherent to women’s entrepreneurship and celebrate their diversity by formulating research conceptualizations that reflect the actual situation within which they operate instead of an assumed or normative situation (de Bruin, Brush, and Welter 2007; Henry et al. 2021). A broader, non-discriminatory perspective of what constitutes entrepreneurship will lead to better theory and increased insight into the relevant issues (Welter, Audretsch, and Gartner 2017).

Second, scholars should abandon normative, masculine-gendered assumptions of entrepreneurship and the corresponding feminine-gendered assumptions concerning family responsibilities. Instead, scholars are encouraged to use the concept of ‘gender’ in the way it was initially intended, i.e. as a socially constructed, processual concept which describes the relationship between what is considered feminine and what is considered masculine. This entails a shift towards a social constructionist epistemology and invites the use of theories such as post-structural feminist theory, institutional theory, identity theory, discourse analysis, postfeminist analysis, agency theory, and several others (Chasserio, Pailot, and Poroli 2014; Henry, Foss, and Ahl 2016; Henry et al. 2021; Smallbone and Welter 2010). There is ample room for further theory development and borrowing from other disciplines such as sociology, psychology, or geography (Berg 1997; Eikhof et al. 2013).

Third, researchers should include contextual factors and study the gendering of contextual factors and how they affect women entrepreneurs. Lately, entrepreneurship studies have challenged mainstream entrepreneurship models by acknowledging and researching both the impact of context and women’s entrepreneurial efforts in constructing and enacting contexts (Roos 2018; Welter 2011; Welter, Gartner, and Drakopoulou Dodd 2016; Welter, Audretsch, and Gartner 2017; Wheadon and Duval-Couetil 2019). Contexts provide individuals with opportunities and set boundaries for their actions. Consequently, attending to the historical, temporal, institutional, spatial, and social context is crucial to understanding when, how, and why entrepreneurship takes place (or not) and why someone becomes involved in entrepreneurship (or not) (Welter and Smallbone 2010). We suggest that researchers add the gendering of context as an over-arching dimension to their work. Note that any dimension of context may also be gendered (Tillmar et al. 2021). This entails that the context must also be regarded as socially constructed (Welter 2020).

Fourth, (and as a consequence of the former points), scholars should expand their methodological repertoire. Studies of gender in the field of women’s entrepreneurship lag behind those in other disciplines, such as sociology, psychology, or organization science. The study of gendering processes, instead of the study of gender as a binary variable that correlates with male and female bodies, requires a shift away from traditional, quantitative approaches towards more focused qualitative methodologies, including in-depth interviews, life histories, case studies, ethnography, and discourse analysis (Ahl 2007b; Bruni, Gherardi, and Poggio 2004a; Byrne, Fattoum, and Diaz Garcia 2019; García and Welter 2011; Hytti 2005). Quantitative studies must be balanced with qualitative insights whilst maintaining sample robustness, the reliability of data sources, and analytical rigour (Henry, Foss, and Ahl 2016; Henry et al. 2021).

Fifth, scholars should consider identity categories other than ‘gender’, categories that also order people into hierarchical orders, such as religion, ethnicity, social and economic status, language, disability, age, or sexual orientation, and consider how such identities intersect for individual persons, thus creating multiple forms of privilege or disadvantage. As a critical framework, ‘intersectionality’ examines the interconnections and interdependencies between social categories (Crenshaw 1991; Holvino 2010) and encourages the examination of how different forms of identity may shape a woman’s entrepreneurial experience (Essers, Benschop, and Doorewaard 2010; Essers and Benschop 2007). By drawing attention to the multiple positionalities of individuals and groups, intersectionality enhances analytical sophistication and deepens theoretical explanations (Dy, Marlow, and Martin 2017; Henry, Foss, and Ahl 2016).

The above-mentioned research strategies are particularly apt for research on women’s entrepreneurship in CEE at the present time since this area is undergoing several societal changes that are in a direction that is dramatically different from the changes that are taking place in the West. The West has seen a decrease in religious influence; an ever-increasing influx of women into the labour market; gender equality legislation (including free abortion); paternity leave; same-sex marriage; adoption rights; and increased levels of immigration leading to multicultural societies. The countries in CEE have followed a different trajectory. Women in the Soviet era were expected to work full-time and manage the household, literally working double shifts. It comes as no surprise that the possibility of deciding not to participate in the labour market became desirable when the Iron Curtain fell. During the Soviet era, freedom of religion was suppressed, while today, the Church is now in solid liaison with governments in many CEE countries, not least of all in Poland, where certain cities have declared themselves ‘LGBTQ+ free zones’ and where abortion is basically outlawed. Hungary has prohibited gender education and has implemented economic incentives for families to have many children. At the same time, this country has prohibited immigration. The CEE region is ripe for studies into gender and intersectionality and research into how the changes that have taken place in these countries have shaped the situation for women and women’s entrepreneurship. Thirty years after independence, there are still working-aged citizens who remember the change from one system to the other. These citizens are an invaluable source of information and may help scholars understand what the transition between the different systems have meant to the lives of the people in CEE.

Conclusion

Our discourse analysis of 30 years of research on women’s entrepreneurship in CEE has analysed how this body of research constructed and positioned women entrepreneurs. We identified five different constructions of the woman entrepreneur in the literature: (i) an untapped economic resource, (ii) a casualty of a gendered industrial culture, (iii) lacking skills relevant to entrepreneurship, (iv) a solution to social problems, and (v) in need of encouragement. In short, this body of research positioned women entrepreneurs as good for many things but essentially inadequate for these purposes, or even victims. We found the reasons for this result to be discursive practices producing a research field that was dominated by descriptive, a-theoretical profile studies, which took no account for feminist theory. These studies primarily used quantitative methods, treated gender as a binary variable, compared men and women against a male-gendered norm, and neglected the influence of gendered structures. Instead, individual women were tasked to improve themselves, thereby limiting the potential policy impact that this body of research may have otherwise enjoyed.

If scholars are to avoid the continued reproduction of women as ‘secondary’, we suggest that they abandon the assumption that entrepreneurship is an individual undertaking for economic or growth purposes; expand their methodological repertoire beyond quantitative studies; introduce gender theory, feminist theory, and an intersectional approach to their work; and study the influence of context and the gendering of context. We recommend that scholars adopt these measures to counteract the patriarchal and neo-conservative conceptions of gender that have become prominent in Central and Eastern European countries.

Finally, we acknowledge the limitations of the present study. While our literature search was extensive, it was limited to publications produced in English. Doctoral theses were omitted since they are not included in the databases we used. The inclusion of papers published in the languages spoken in CEE could possibly have produced a different picture than the one presented here. However, our extensive experience regarding women’s entrepreneurship and women’s issues in the region supports the results reported in this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/08985626.2023.2170472

Notes

1. Communism started to fall apart with the fall of the Berlin Wall, in 1989. Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland, and Romania regained their independence in the same year. The Soviet Union was officially dissolved in 1991. In summary, the CEE countries that regained independence were Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia, Albania, Montenegro, Serbia, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo. These countries are home to 66.5 million people (Eurostat 2021, World Bank 2021), comprising 20% of the European population.