Matching Stigma Sources to Social Change Strategies: A Framework from FemTech Entrepreneurship
研究污名市场中的创业悖论，基于美国女性科技企业的质性研究，提出将污名来源与社会变革策略相匹配的框架，揭示创业者如何通过改变结构、实践、叙事和情感来推动社会变革。
Entrepreneurs in stigmatized markets face a paradox: stigma simultaneously generates opportunities from unmet needs, while creating barriers that constrain entrepreneurial action. This produces a dual mandate for stigma entrepreneurship: ventures must focus not only on survival but also on driving social change that alters the cultural conditions that sustain stigma. Drawing on a qualitative study of U.S.-based FemTech ventures in menopause, pelvic health, and sex tech, we introduce a social change framework for entrepreneurship in stigmatized markets that specifically matches sources of stigma to social change strategies. We show how stigma produces recurring gaps in knowledge, solutions, and experience, while its sources create distinct barriers. Entrepreneurs respond by engaging source-specific mechanisms to reconfigure domains of structures, practices, narratives, and emotions. We contribute to the literature on stigma entrepreneurship and entrepreneuring as social change by linking stigma sources to social change mechanisms, while highlighting the trade-offs and paradoxical nature of social change in stigmatized markets.