Introduction

Women’s participation and challenges to the liberal script: A global perspective

“…At the same time, backlashes against reproductive rights have resulted in the restriction and criminalization of abortion in countries as diverse as Poland and the United States. One can point to similar developments elsewhere, with illiberal governments and movements leveraging discourses of the family, the nation, and religion to call for the restoration of so-called traditional gender arrangements (Bluhm et al, 2021; Graff et al, 2019).…”

The influence of institutional context on women's entrepreneurship in the Baltics

“…Soviet people interpreted the communist project of women's emancipation and gender equality as artificial and patronising, and as yet another facet of communist ideology to be rejected. Instead, liberation came to imply the freedom for women and men to enact a conservative feminine or masculine identity and for women to retreat from paid work, essentially celebrating a traditional housewife ideal that had long been abandoned by the West (Bluhm et al, 2021). These changes provided systematic advantages to men as they continued to hold leading managerial and political positions exploiting their previous networks and experience.…”

“…Traditional ideas concerning gender difference played a key role in shaping such exclusionary advantages in the public sphere (Watson, 1993). Gender inequalities were essentially reconfigured and reproduced under the new political regimes (Bluhm et al, 2021).…”

“…The primary obstacles identified include the gendered division of childcare and household work (Poortman and Lippe, 2009), access to resources, and not least of all capital (Blake, 2006), or the gendered norms in business (Liu et al, 2015) and policy (Ahl and Marlow, 2019). With all of this in mind, most studies are from Western, chiefly Anglo-Saxon countries with a long history of capitalism and free enterprise (Jennings and Brush, 2013); therefore, the findings may not adequately describe women's entrepreneurship in contexts with a different history and/or economic systems , or differently configured gender roles (Bluhm et al, 2021;Kaskla, 2003).…”

“…Gender equality and women's liberation were associated with communist ideology to be rejected after the independence. Instead, liberation came to imply the freedom for women and men to enact a conservative feminine or masculine identity and for women to retreat from paid work, essentially celebrating a traditional housewife ideal that had long been abandoned by the West (Bluhm et al, 2021). It resulted in the gender inequalities reproduced under the new political regimes (Bluhm et al, 2021).…”