Female social entrepreneurship as a discursive struggle

We analyse a process of female social entrepreneurship involving the establishment of a new enterprise within a cultural environment traditionally regarded as hostile towards this form of female endeavour. Our argument relates to the process of how social entrepreneurial endeavour can displace the strong bond of conventionality epitomised by a dominant discourse, driven by a bypassed shame reaction to the withdrawal of interactional deference. In doing this we adopt an overtly constructionist approach to analyse the process of entrepreneurship in terms of a discursive struggle that challenges the status quo and operates at the boundaries of convention and received wisdom.