Female entrepreneurship as rupture: becoming a female entrepreneur in Sweden in neoliberal times

Neoliberal economies have fostered entrepreneurship through the restructuring and reduction of public sector employment, an emphasis on individual agency, and on becoming entrepreneur as a processual project of self. Female entrepreneurship as a situated phenomenon takes particular forms in this context. Drawing on empirical research on female entrepreneurs in Sweden, we suggest that becoming entrepreneur for our interviewees involves agency as a reaction formation to five phenomena: organisational restructuring processes, work conflicts in previous employment, sickness, family issues, and a view of life as a differently worked and lived project than encapsulated in conventional employment. Entrepreneuring here becomes rupture but also engagement with new entrepreneurial support structures, in this instance an all-female co-working hub. We challenge certain core assumptions about entrepreneurship, in particular the notion of entrepreneurs as young and solely future- and goal-oriented.