“Quem pode ser a dona?”: Afro-Brazilian women entrepreneurs and gendered racism

Abstract

In 2013, the number of Black entrepreneurs surpassed the number of White entrepreneurs in Brazil. Of those Black entrepreneurs, 30 percent were women. In Brazil, gendered racism often stereotypes Black women as domestic servants or hypersexual. Despite the robust literature on Afro-Brazilians generally and Afro-Brazilian women particularly, Afro-Brazilian women entrepreneurs, their experiences, and their strategies for competing in the market and resisting gendered racism remain under-theorized. I use semi-structured interviews with Black women entrepreneurs to explain the relationship between gendered racism and Black entrepreneurship. My findings show that Afro-Brazilian women entrepreneurs actively defy and redefine the standard images of entrepreneurs and Black women in Brazil. They contest the treatment of Black women as objects of the market by situating themselves as agentic players by challenging gendered racism through two entrepreneurial cultural strategies: (1) engaging in dignity work and (2) employing a women-first imperative. By centering the experience of Afro-Brazilian women, I contribute to the entrepreneurship literature, Africana Studies, and Latin American Studies.