Purpose

To interrogate the grand narrative of “entrepreneurship for development” that dominates international development circles, by applying a feminist critical discourse analysis that prioritizes women's situated experiences as local stories.

Design/methodology/approach

Two existing frameworks for analysing women's entrepreneurship, namely the 5M (Brush et al., 2009) and the 8M (Abuhussein and Koburtay, 2021) frameworks, are used to examine the local stories of women in rural Ethiopia to provide a counter-narrative to the grand narrative of “entrepreneurship for development”. The local stories are derived from 16 focus group discussions and 32 interviews.

Findings

The findings provide a counter-narrative to the grand narrative of “entrepreneurship for development”, evident in Ethiopia and in international development generally, while demonstrating larger structural issues at play. They challenge entrepreneurship's solely positive effects. While women recognize the benefits of having a business, particularly in terms of financial gains, empowerment and social recognition, they also highlight negative consequences, including uncertainty, concerns for their own personal safety, criticism, stress, limited social life and fear of indebtedness and poverty.

Practical implications

Policymakers, scholars and development professionals are urged to reflect on the limitations of “entrepreneurship for development” and to consider the negative effects that promoting an acritical grand narrative of entrepreneurship could have on women's lives.

Originality/value

The article advances an innovative partnership between feminist analysis and established women's entrepreneurship frameworks to contest dominant assumptions in the fields of entrepreneurship and international development studies. It adds to the limited empirical evidence on women's entrepreneurial activity in Ethiopia, tests the adequacy of the 5M and 8M frameworks in the rural low-income context of Ethiopia, and proposes a 7+M framework as an alternative to study rural women's entrepreneurship in low and middle income countries.

中文翻译：

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审问“创业促进发展”：基于埃塞俄比亚农村妇女当地故事的反叙事

目的

通过应用女权主义批判性话语分析，将女性的情境经历作为当地故事，审视主导国际发展圈的“创业促进发展”的宏大叙事。

设计/方法/途径

两个现有的分析女性创业的框架，即 5M（Brush等人，2009 年）和 8M（Abuhussein 和 Koburtay，2021 年）框架，被用来研究埃塞俄比亚农村妇女的当地故事，以提供反叙事“创业促发展”的宏大叙事。本地故事来源于 16 次焦点小组讨论和 32 次访谈。

发现

调查结果反驳了“创业促进发展”的宏大叙事，这在埃塞俄比亚和国际发展中很明显，同时也说明了更大的结构性问题在起作用。他们挑战企业家精神的唯一积极影响。虽然女性认识到经营企业的好处，特别是在经济收益、赋权和社会认可方面，但她们也强调了负面后果，包括不确定性、对自身人身安全的担忧、批评、压力、有限的社交生活以及对负债的恐惧和贫困。

实际影响

敦促政策制定者、学者和发展专业人士反思“创业促进发展”的局限性，并考虑提倡非批判性的创业宏大叙事可能对女性生活产生的负面影响。

原创性/价值

本文推进了女权主义分析与已建立的女性创业框架之间的创新伙伴关系，以质疑创业和国际发展研究领域的主导假设。它增加了关于埃塞俄比亚妇女创业活动的有限经验证据，测试了 5M 和 8M 框架在埃塞俄比亚农村低收入背景下的充分性，并提出了 7+M 框架作为研究低收入农村妇女创业的替代方案和中等收入国家。