Description
Writers: Maja Farstad, Rita Moseng Sivertsen, Madeleine Gustavsson
Research on women’s entrepreneurship has often highlighted gendered barriers, masculine entrepreneurial norms and challenges related to legitimacy and identity. Less attention has been paid to how gender and entrepreneurial identity are experienced in contexts characterised by relatively high levels of gender equality and strong institutional support. This article examines the role of gender and entrepreneurial identity in women’s local food entrepreneurship in rural Norway. Drawing on interviews with women local food entrepreneurs and key actors supporting rural entrepreneurship in Trøndelag, we explore how women understand and enact entrepreneurship in the local food sector. The findings reveal considerable diversity in entrepreneurial orientations, motivations and identities. While some women pursued growth and expansion, others emphasised product quality, meaningful work, sustainability, family life and contributions to local communities. Although both entrepreneurs and support actors recognised gendered patterns in entrepreneurship, gender was generally not experienced as a major source of exclusion or disadvantage. Rather, the women described the local food sector as characterised by supportive networks, advisory services and accessible public support structures. Entrepreneurial identity was often less salient than identities linked to food production, farming, product quality and the use of local resources. Many women identified more strongly with what they produced and contributed to society than with the entrepreneurial role itself. The study highlights the importance of understanding gender and entrepreneurial identity as contextually embedded phenomena and suggests that entrepreneurship support systems should recognise a diversity of entrepreneurial motivations, values and identities beyond growth-oriented models of entrepreneurial success.
Journal of Rural Studies, Volume 127, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2026.104350
