Patriarchy repackaged: how a neoliberal economy and conservative gender norms shape entrepreneurial identities in Eastern Europe

Abstract

Using positioning analysis we examine how women entrepreneurs construct their entrepreneurial identities in conversations with journalists. The data consists of every interview with women entrepreneurs in every Latvian monthly women’s magazine over a 30-year period. Eleven countries in Eastern Europe, including Latvia, broke away from the communist regime in the 1990s and embraced neoliberal and entrepreneurial values that rely on the use of agency in a free market and where individuals were considered autonomous agents, no longer constrained by gender inequalities and power imbalances. However, an analysis shows that identity constructions by women entrepreneurs have been built on neo-conservative assumptions regarding gender. The default option expressed in the magazines reveals that entrepreneurship is normatively masculine, and the entrepreneurial identity that is on offer for women is either as a ‘secondary entrepreneur’ or a ‘failed woman’. The post-feminist conception of a woman who can have it all, i.e. both a successful business career and a traditional feminine identity with a happy family life, is absent in the interviews. When neoliberalism entered Latvia and merged with neo-conservative gender roles, a specific Eastern European postfeminist regime emerged where neither entrepreneurship nor structural change can be seen as challenging the prevailing patriarchal gender order.