Why Small or Big? Problematizing Emancipation Discourse in Non-Western Women's Entrepreneurship

Abstract

Research is beginning to query the dominance of Western-influenced perspectives on emancipation. It identifies a significant contextual oversight in the discourse surrounding the emancipation of women in entrepreneurship in non-Western settings. To this end, we employ an integrative literature review to unpack the research practices through which emancipation in women's entrepreneurship is constructed and understood along a macro–micro lens. Our analysis identifies how emancipation is constructed through three intra-acting research practices: portraying women entrepreneurs as victims, framing agency as inherently constrained, and assessing emancipation based on its scale and presumed intentionality. Building on this, we contribute a processual perspective on emancipation which draws upon Karen Barad's agential realist. In a way, we reconceptualize agency and emancipation as phenomena emerging through contextually embedded intra-actions. This perspective facilitates a more nuanced empirical understanding of women's entrepreneurial practices, recognizing their significance for women entrepreneurs in non-Western contexts, with implications for studying emancipation as a process of becoming.