Managing the business of everyday life: the roles of space and place in “mumpreneurship”

Abstract

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to develop gendered entrepreneurship theory through a focus on the roles of space and place in the daily lives and businesses of mothers who have configured business around the daily routines of family work. Design/methodology/approach -Through a consideration of the accounts of 29 "mumpreneurs" and using a framework forwarded by Jarvis to understand the geographically embedded "infrastructure of everyday life", this paper seeks to understand mumpreneurial decision making, choice and constraint. Findings -Spatial factors, in their myriad forms, run through and affect mothers' different levels of capability and constraint, and thus the (gender-role and entrepreneurial) "choices" that individuals and families make. Placing families in the realities of specific, material locales helps to embed our understandings of these decision-making processes in real places. Originality/value -This discussion: advances new understanding about how space and place enable or constrain mumpreneurship (in particular) and entrepreneurship (more generally); and provides a lens through which to examine the structure/agency dualism in relation to gendered entrepreneurship.

A Discourse Analysis of Research Texts on Mumpreneurs

“…In addition, running home- based businesses restricts the woman's business identity (Surangi, 2017), and this case does identify some of the potential disadvantages of growing business within a family space (Surangi, 2017). These findings are consistent with Ekinsmyth (2013), who found tensions involved in home-based work in the UK, specifically with regards to isolation, workaholism, space restrictions and a negative influence on home-space and family lives (Ekinsmyth, 2013). Moreover, some researchers revealed the tensions involved in home-based businesses, particularly with regards to isolation (Mason, Carter & Tagg, 2011), space limitations and a negative impact on home-space and family lives (Surangi, 2017).…”

Life course pathways to business start-up

“…Heavy domestic roles tend to reduce women's entrepreneur labour capacity at particular points in the life course, while light domestic duties facilitate men's availability for entrepreneurial labour (Forson 2013;Jayawarna, Jones, and Macpherson 2011;Rouse and Kitching 2006). This effect varies within individual lives and across HH life courses (Ekinsmyth 2013;Saridakis, Marlow, and Storey 2014). Complicating this effect, both men and women in Western cultures are driven by economic imperatives (Saridakis, Marlow, and Storey 2014).…”

“…Gendered D. Jayawarna et al 286 divisions of HH labour tend to cast men as primary breadwinners and women as primary carers (Bradley 2003). This tends to resource men with more time and spatial mobility to commit to entrepreneurship than women (Ekinsmyth 2013) and to promote greater economic motivation among men (Jayawarna, Rouse, and Kitching 2013). We propose that breadwinners will have greater capacity to apply their class and gender privileges to business start-up while carers will be discouraged from doing so.…”

The importance of housing and neighbourhood resources for urban microbusinesses

“…There is an assumption that women entrepreneurs rely more on local networks and that peers and role models close-by have a greater effect on women becoming entrepreneurs than men (Ekinsmyth, 2013;Hanson & Blake, 2009). However, no study to our knowledge measures spatial networks for men and women separately and how this impacts on businesses (cf.…”