Woman’s entrepreneurship as a gendered niche: the implications for regional development policy
基于女性主义地理学，通过研究正式女性创业网络的经理和成员，发现这些网络虽旨在赋权女性，实则延续了女性在性别化利基中的边缘化，对区域发展政策有重要启示。
Abstract In this article, we argue that entrepreneurship is a socio-spatial embedded activity and that the social construction of gender, time, space, economy and culture is manifest in the masculinities that are ascribed a normative role in entrepreneurship development policies. Drawing on feminist approaches to articulate and perform resistance to the hegemonic ‘masculinist’ discourses on entrepreneurship, we argue that women’s entrepreneurship is contextually embedded in institutional and social structures that both limit and provide opportunities for its enactment. Regional economic development policy has focused, inter alia, on stimulating and supporting women’s entrepreneurship through the establishment of women-only entrepreneurial networks to provide support, role models and access to resources. Grounded in feminist geography and based on a detailed qualitative study of network managers and members of formally established women-only networks, we provide evidence of the disconnect between the emancipatory intent and the actual impact of these initiatives. While these networks aim to empower and encourage women into entrepreneurship, in practice, they perpetuate women’s marginalisation and ghettoisation in gendered niches.