‘Involuntary exit for personal reasons’ – A gendered critique of the business exit decision
研究批判了女性因个人原因退出创业被视为自愿且平淡的假设，通过访谈16位英国女性创业者，揭示其退出实为被迫自愿，源于无法协调照料家庭与创业劳动的压力，并伴随后悔、解脱与怨恨等矛盾情绪。
Women are more likely to exit from entrepreneurship for personal reasons; such exits are deemed uneventful and voluntary. We critically evaluate such assumptions by adopting a gendered critique to unpack the nature of such personal reasons arguing that they largely relate to the stress of accommodating incompatible caring/domestic and entrepreneurial labour demands. This, we argue, leads to forced voluntarism which, for many women, instigates conflicting notions of regret, relief and resentment. To explore these arguments, we draw upon in-depth interviews with 16 United Kingdom women entrepreneurs who had voluntarily exited from their ventures citing personal reasons. The evidence describes how women made sense of the decision-making process to exit from entrepreneurship questioning the voluntary nature of the exit decision. We conclude by noting how once again, gendered assumptions conceal the contradictory demands women encounter when trying to reconcile the needs of the household and of their ventures analysing the implications this has for how exit decisions are categorised and the false picture this presents of alleged voluntarism.