Meaningfulness and self-integrity at work amongst older, self-employed women entrepreneurs

1. Introduction

The interplay between female gender and older age is often described as a double jeopardy. This combined potential of sexism and ageism means that women's ageing is automatically viewed as problematic, and, when taken for granted, stigmatises older women as dejected and miserable (Krekula, 2007, 2016). From earlier studies we know that the masculine norm of entrepreneurship has implications for the identification of self-employed older women with entrepreneurial ideals (Tomlinson and Colgan, 2014), and even the development of companies owned by older women (Meliou et al., 2019).

Nevertheless, self-employment amongst women in the later stages of adult life is growing (Bosma et al., 2020; OECD/EU, 2019). Still most research treats entrepreneurs as a homogenous group, even though, as an experience, entrepreneurship is not one dimensional. Ethnicity, social class, and gender are important dimensions which need to be studied though an intersectional lens (Aydin et al., 2019).

The societal changes in recent decades have highlighted the need for knowledge on self-employment in different life phases and positions. At the same time, finding meaning in one's work has developed into a pervasive Western work life discourse, partly driven by the strengthening of individualism, intertwined with neoliberal values (Ahl and Marlow, 2021; Rose, 1999). The significance of traditional social bonds and institutions such as family, religion or a steady workplace have diminished. Instead, several theoreticians of modernity see the centrality of an authentic and independent self as a constituent characteristic of our times. The quest for a meaningful work path can be seen as part of this “turning to the self” (Taylor, 1992). Consequently, the scholarly interest in meaningful work has also increased (Bailey et al., 2019a). Most research on meaningful work centres on organisational employment whereas the study of meaningful work and other positively laden experiences is less common in entrepreneurship studies (Geldenhuys and Johnson, 2021; Pathak, 2021; Ryff, 2019; Wiklund et al., 2019).

Whilst the liabilities experienced by older women in self-employment are identified, less attention has been paid to the advantages of being an older woman, such as higher levels of well-being amongst women entrepreneurs than amongst their male counterparts (Singer et al., 2018), and the experiences of competence and independence that women relate to growing older (Krekula, 2007). Pathak (2021) suggests that the higher levels of well-being amongst women entrepreneurs may reflect their ability to experience greater satisfaction from their daily work as business owners. Additionally, women entrepreneurs focus on more measures than men when evaluating their success as entrepreneurs (Manolova et al., 2012). Hence, there is a call for entrepreneurship studies of meaningful work in later adulthood (Ryff, 2019) as well as from a gender perspective (Lips-Wiersma et al., 2020).

Moreover, whilst motivation to start and sustain a business has been studied amongst both women and older self-employed people (Kerr, 2017; Wainwright et al., 2015), how the self-employed experience, create and sustain meaningful work in their daily practices, especially from the intersections of gender and age, merit more attention. There are calls for research to add to our understanding of women entrepreneurs and age, from a perspective that focusses on how women entrepreneurs themselves experience and construct the meanings attached to their work and the process of ageing (Meliou et al., 2019; Meliou and Mallett, 2022; Tomlinson and Colgan, 2014).

Self-integrity, the focus of this study, is the experience of being and developing into one's self, being authentic and engaging in activities in line with one's values (Lips-Wiersma and Morris, 2009; Lips-Wiersma et al., 2020; Both-Nwabuwe et al., 2020). Lips-Wiersma and Morris (2009) identify integrity with self along with unity with others, serving others, and expressing full potential, as the four elements of meaningful work. These elements are sources of meaningful work which all together balance two dimensions: orientation to self vs orientation to others; and being vs doing. As the notion of self-integrity amongst older self-employed women seems to be in conflict with the stereotype of entrepreneurship as an activity for young or middle-aged men (Ahl and Marlow, 2021; Ainsworth and Hardy, 2008; Aydin et al., 2019), it is a particularly relevant area to study further. Thus, our research question is two-fold: First, how do over 55-year-old, self-employed women experience and represent self-integrity in their work? And second, how are these experiences and representations intertwined with gendered ageing?’.

This paper contributes to the literature on gender and entrepreneurship by highlighting how gender and age relate to self-integrity as an element and source of meaningful work in self-employment. As a second contribution, we join the budding research stream on meaningful work and well-being in entrepreneurial studies (Pathak, 2021; Ryff, 2019; Wiklund et al., 2019). The stream lacks qualitative studies that focus on the processes or practices of pursuing meaningfulness and that discuss the implications and prerequisites of them (Bailey et al., 2019a; Ryff, 2019). Our study highlights these dimensions – how integrity with self is experienced, created and sustained. We take the study of the field further by providing rich descriptions and examples of the ways in which self-integrity is “done” in self-employment.

2. Self-integrity as part of doing meaningful work

According to Bailey et al. (2019b, p. 98), meaningful work is a multi-dimensional phenomenon that indicates a “positive, subjective, individual experience” in relation to work. Dominant research on meaningful work builds on psychological theories and a unitarist idea of meaningfulness as an experience – often a motivational state that can be measured, orchestrated through leadership and work organisation, and linked to positive, individual, and organisational results (e.g. Carton, 2018; Lysova et al., 2019).

In this paper, we adhere to studies that build on the humanities tradition (Bailey et al., 2019b; Lips-Wiersma and Morris, 2009), which sees the quest for meaningfulness as inherently human rather than something to be managed or organised by an organisation (Bunderson and Thompson, 2009). We assume that people actively search for meaning in their lives and work, desiring to perceive their work as purposeful and significant (Pratt and Ashforth, 2003, pp. 310–311). Meaningfulness is understood as both a subjective and objective phenomenon, a central human need, and consequently, it should be available to everyone (Yeoman, 2014).

So far, meaningfulness amongst entrepreneurs has been stressed in the context of social entrepreneurship, where the experience of meaningfulness is attached to solving social problems (e.g. Dempsey and Sanders, 2010) and their work being culturally positioned as particularly meaningful (Symon and Whiting, 2019). Gregori et al. (2021) show how meaningful experiences or lack of meaning shape environmental entrepreneurs' identity work. Nemkova et al. (2019) differentiate between manifest meaning (monetary rewards) and latent meaning (intrinsic rewards such as autonomy, creativity, authenticity, and recognition) in their research on self-employing freelancers who work on digital platforms. According to their study, entrepreneurial orientation, e.g. portraying oneself as a “business owner” and focussing on developing their business skills, enabled these self-employers to experience both latent and manifest meaning in work. According to Brieger et al.’s quantitative study (2021), work meaningfulness, defined as the perception that one's work is valuable and significant, mediates the relationship between entrepreneurs' social value creation beliefs and their work engagement.

Moreover, meaningfulness is sometimes understood and portrayed as a heroic calling behind or a passion (Newman et al., 2021) towards entrepreneurship. Lips-Wiersma and Wright (2012) point out that the concept of a calling implies “one overall purpose of work”, and Duffy and Dik (2013) also include the notion of an external summons (a “caller”) and prosocial motivation into their definition of calling. Hence, it does not help us understand how aspects of meaningful work might be nurtured or compromised by daily entrepreneurial activities. Meaningful work needs to be studied as a phenomenon that requires constant construction and reconstruction by entrepreneurs themselves instead of viewing it as a psychologically grounded, individual experience or objective facet of certain work.

Lips-Wiersma and Morris' (2009) framework of the elements of meaningful work, the Map of Meaning, is influential within the humanities-inspired tradition. These four elements are identified as different sources of meaningful work. Engaging with the elements is a way of uncovering and affirming meaningful work. The first element of the framework, integrity with self (or in earlier versions, “developing the inner self” or “developing and becoming one's self”), has been defined as “being true to oneself, moral development, and being authentic” (Both-Nwabuwe et al., 2020, p. 106). Lips-Wiersma and Wright (2012) and Lips-Wiersma et al. (2015) also describe this element as “wanting to be a good person, or the best we can be”, “developing virtues” or “becoming one's higher self”. The second element, unity with others, reflects our need for belonging and shared values. The third element, serving others, highlights the need to make a difference in others' lives. The fourth and last element is called expressing full potential; it consists of making an impact by, for example, creating something new and achieving goals (Lips-Wiersma and Morris, 2009; Lips-Wiersma et al., 2015, 2016, 2020; Both-Nwabuwe et al., 2020).

Interestingly, the terms in the “integrity with self” quadrant of Lips-Wiersma's framework have undergone several changes before ending up with integrity in their newest publications (Lips-Wiersma et al., 2020; Both-Nwabuwe et al., 2020). However, they do not specify the meaning or theoretical background of “integrity” as a concept. Etymologically, the word integrity derives from Latin integer (whole, intact). It can be used to mean a virtue when referring to a person's character, but it can also be used when referring to objects being uncorrupted or complete. Sometimes the term is used almost interchangeably with “moral”. Lips-Wiersma's framework seems to mostly relate integrity to self-integration (keeping the self-intact and uncorrupted) and to the identity view (a person's holding true to commitments with which they deeply identify) (Cox et al., 2017).

Previous studies have described self-integrity and a belief in the constant development of one's personal potential as fundamental to entrepreneurship (Ryff, 2019) and to meaningful work in general (Lips-Wiersma and Morris, 2009). Particularly interesting in this respect is Sherman's research (2020), which examines the similarities and differences between social and commercial entrepreneurs' experiences on work meaningfulness using Lips-Wiersma and Wright's Comprehensive Meaningful Work Scale. Sherman shows that self-integrity (conceptualised in the scale as “developing and becoming self”) is highly important to all entrepreneurs, and there is no significant difference between social and commercial entrepreneurs in this element of meaningful work. Striving for self-integrity in work can, however, be emotionally exhausting and even impossible to attain for certain groups of entrepreneurs impacted by, for example, their choice to become self-employed, health problems, divorce or separation from a partner, and care responsibilities (Tomlinson and Colgan, 2014).

Moreover, being authentic and developing into one's self as an older woman in self-employment seems to be in conflict with the stereotypical view of entrepreneurship as an activity for young or middle-aged men (Ahl and Marlow, 2021; Ainsworth and Hardy, 2008; Aydin et al., 2019), making self-integrity a relevant area to study further.

3. Methodology

The study draws on qualitative empirical materials generated during a project aimed at developing the competences and well-being of over 55-year-old entrepreneurs. The project activities consisted of before and after interviews, group meetings, and individual coaching sessions over three months which were free of charge for the participants. The development project was inspired by participatory action research (PAR) (e.g. Hennink et al., 2015, pp. 49–52), which means that the research was conducted with the participants and there was an aim for change. Therefore, authors 1 and 2 were also organisers and facilitators of the project activities. In PAR this double role is the norm and is seen as strength of the research since the researchers get to know the participants and their thoughts much better than, for instance, in a single interview.

The ten participants of this study were part of a larger project with 33 participants which lasted between 2019 and 2022, this forming a sub-set of the full sample. They identified themselves as women in the registration form and are all members of the first project activities in 2019. They were recruited through entrepreneurial associations and social media groups for entrepreneurs and selected based on their order of registration. The groups were open to all genders, and in the first group there was one man amongst the participants. His data were omitted from analysis. The participants were of the same ethnic background, aged between 56 and 66, and based in the Uusimaa region in Southern Finland. All of them worked as full-time entrepreneurs, except for one, who was retired but worked part-time in her newly founded firm. The participants' experience in self-employment ranged from one year to several decades and they operated in different fields of business. All of them had been in organisational employment before becoming self-employed. We refer to the participants by pseudonyms chosen from common Finnish names of this age group. Table 1 provides information of their industry of self-employment and their age group.

The group attended five meetings, which were facilitated by three specialists from Institute of Occupational Health including Author 1 and Author 2. During the meetings, we covered and discussed themes of digitalisation and marketing, customer-orientation, skills development, and ageing. In addition, the participants shared thoughts and concerns, and carried out assignments both during and between the meetings on an online platform, created for the group.

Between group meetings, the facilitators met the participants one-to-one in online coaching sessions. The coaching sessions were approximately one-hour long, solution oriented and sparring discussions. The topics of the sessions arose from the participants themselves and comprised self-branding, well-being in general, work–life balance, and digital marketing. The participants attended approximately four sessions each.

The principal source of research data were semi-structured interviews. All the participants were interviewed twice: before and after the project activities. The initial interviews were guided by the following themes: (1) the participant's work experience and background as an entrepreneur; (2) her skills, strengths, and development needs; (3) her hopes and expectations for the future; (4) her work demands and resources; and (5) her thoughts about age. Participants' expectations of the group sessions and objectives for participation were also discussed. Before the interview, the participants filled in a self-assessment questionnaire that included questions about their skills and strengths, self-efficacy, trust in the future, work engagement, and work ability. The questionnaire was used to raise topics for discussion during the interview.

In the follow-up interviews, the participants were asked to evaluate the achievement of their own objectives and to reflect upon changes that had occurred during their participation. They filled the same self-assessment questionnaire as before, and it was used again to stimulate discussion.

The duration of the interviews varied from 40 min to 1.5 h. They were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Whilst the interviews were conducted and analysed in Finnish, excerpts presented in the results section were translated by the authors into English.

In addition to interviews, several other data were generated during the project activities. These data include facilitators' notes after group meetings and coaching sessions. After the meetings, facilitators discussed and made semi-structured notes on the theme and content of the meeting, with assessments of group dynamics and how specific exercises functioned. The notes also include descriptions of topical matters in the participants' lives and businesses as they appeared in the meetings. The facilitators also made similar notes individually after each coaching session. All these notes were used to supplement interview transcriptions during analysis.

Supplementary data sources also include material that the facilitators used in the group meetings, such as slideshows and flip chart sheets, as well as participants' online discussions and written assignments on the online platform between group meetings. The supplementary data were not analysed in this study, nor were the self-assessment questionnaires. However, together all these data provide deeper understanding on the participants' life and thoughts.

All the data were generated both for research purposes and to support development aims. Documenting our activities made it possible to follow-up on earlier questions and discussions which enriched the material. Table 2 presents a summary of the data (part A) and timeline of the project activities and data collection (part B).

We analysed the interviews by means of thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006; Vaismoradi et al., 2013). Even though the process was iterative, some steps are distinguishable. First, we identified work-related phenomena that the participants described as being laden with special significance or importance and interpreted these as meaningful to them in their work. In line with our interest in the experiences of meaningfulness in realising self-employment, we omitted the materials related to motivation to enter self-employment and shifted our focus to the current moment: what the entrepreneurs especially enjoyed in their work at present. We searched for phenomena which were repeated in the materials and expressed through words signifying strong positive emotion and commitment, such as “it's really important to me that I can do things my own way, the way I like”. In the following phase, we concentrated on findings that circulated around self-integrity as becoming and developing one's self: how the participants discursively constructed “doing” integrity in their everyday work. Preliminary themes included, for example, “trusting yourself”, “doing what you love”, and “developing yourself”. These preliminary themes were regrouped and refined into the final ones presented in the results (see Table 3). Last, we were influenced by the intersectional methodological framework by Marfelt (2016), examining how age and gender emerged and interacted as socially constructed categories in the themes. We were interested in the ongoing actions and everyday processes that the participants described, and examined any expressions of oppression, privilege or other dimension that emerged in the findings. A similar process of analysis was also conducted with the facilitators' notes.

4. Findings: older self-employed women and self-integrity at work

Next, we move on to the findings of the study. We identified three dominant practices that create and sustain integrity with self at work: “Respecting one's self-knowledge”, “Using one's professional abilities', and “Developing as a professional”. Our findings illustrate how these practices are interwoven with their experiences of age and gender.

5. Discussion and conclusions

In this paper, we set out to identify how older self-employed women experience and represent self-integrity – an element and source of meaningful work – in their daily work life. Moreover, we explored the intersections between female gender and older age in the identified practices.

As a result, we identified three different themes that were recurrently drawn upon and employed as practices to create and sustain self-integrity in their work: “Respecting one's self-knowledge”, “Using one's professional abilities', and “Developing as a professional”. The participants experienced self-integrity especially when identifying and trusting their own strengths, using professional competences (competences related to, for example, being a therapist, a writer or a health care provider) that build on these strengths, and deepening or otherwise developing these skills. In contrast, they experienced and expressed entrepreneurial competences such as marketing, especially self-branding, and sales skills as a threat to these practices. Whilst many studies identify a call to become an entrepreneur as a signal of meaningful work and the quest for meaningfulness to be the motivation behind starting one's own business, we argue that the construction of meaningful work – especially the element of self-integrity – is something one maintains through everyday work. Therefore, by focussing on the processual dimension – how self-integrity is created and sustained – we take the study of meaningful work one step further in this direction (Ryff, 2019).

Being a self-employed woman affects the practices of self-integrity at work both as a benefit and as a liability. First, being a woman is represented as an asset, through the appreciation of skills and traits that can be interpreted as stereotypically female, for example, empathy and sensitivity. However, although the participants respected their womanhood and its characteristics such as menopause symptoms and feminine appearance, their womanhood was still portrayed as a liability in contrast to the “real” entrepreneurship of an ageless man or in conflict with younger women who know how to brand themselves on social media. When talking about their work, the participants repeatedly used men as a point of reference to which to compare themselves. Moreover, gender was mentioned through a stereotypical arrangement: the funds of a male partner often enabled women entrepreneurs to focus on aspects of their work that nourish their self-integrity.

Ageing was strongly intertwined with the identified practices. Notably, older age was framed as an asset. Older age was experienced as connected to life experience, which further strengthened self-knowledge and professional abilities. Moreover, older age was portrayed as increasing self-respect and legitimating the feeling of trust in oneself and one's competence. Self-respect and trust in oneself also made it easier for the participants to respect one's boundaries: not working too much or warding off the use of some digital technologies. Digitalisation has previously been identified as antagonistic to meaningful work (Lips-Wiersma and Morris, 2018) and a challenge for older generations in work life (Reneland-Forsman, 2018).

Ageing of the female body was referred to specifically through the talk of menopause. Menopause symptoms were touched upon as either something one needs to accept and respect as a part of oneself, or as something negative that limits the way in which women can express themselves in relation to the male norm; for example, which clothing to wear. Early studies of physical ageing amongst women have stated that, in general, women experience an aversion to and shame from growing old (Sontag, 1978). Later studies have questioned this and showed how older women become more content with their appearance as they age (Krekula, 2007; Öberg and Tornstam, 1999). In our results, talk of the ageing body and appearance mirrors self-respect. However, showing oneself visually in social media was an activity and an arena from which most of them shied away. Being an older woman in public and bringing oneself to the forefront of attention in particular was experienced as a challenge to their self-integrity.

By scrutinising self-integrity as an element and source of meaningful work in entrepreneurship studies, we reveal gender and age-related experiences of self-integrity in self-employment. These experiences show a nuanced interplay of gender and age. Whilst older age was mostly referred to as a quality that deepened the experiences of self-integrity at work for the self-employed, being an older woman complicated these experiences. Self-integrity as a woman in self-employment was challenged by the male norm. Our study adds nuance to the results of Tomlinson and Colgan (2014), who identified tensions between over 50-year-old women's experiences of entrepreneurship as dynamic and active, and ageing as a state of decline. Although the participants of our study identified ageing as a partially limiting condition, they also experienced their daily work as entrepreneurs as a malleable activity that allows self-knowledge and self-respect of the personal boundaries they have learnt through ageing. Our results echo Tomlinson and Colgan's (2014) finding of tension between female gender and the dominant view of entrepreneurship as a masculine activity; but we also identified signs of stereotypically female characteristics such as empathy and sensitivity as sources of self-integrity and even business assets. As in Meliou and Mallett's (2022) study, we also identified that the position of an older self-employed woman allowed for experiences for self-expression and learning. Older age gave them credibility as professionals in customer interactions as well as allowed them to lean on and trust their life experience in their work. Similarly, the women negotiated challenges stemming from structural and cultural norms of gendered ageing which both challenge and comply with the male norm of entrepreneurship. Our findings indicate, however, that to be able to realise and develop themselves in the professional work they considered meaningful, several women relied on socio-economic support from their spouses. In our study, being able to realise self-integrity in daily work and to deepen it through professional development was enabled by a relatively stable financial situation made possible by a steady income of their partner.

There are, of course, limitations to our study. Firstly, our sample of ten participants might be considered small. However, the different kinds of empirical materials generated a plethora of rich, in-depth data and allowed us to understand the work of a group of self-employed women in detail. Since the participants of the study are participants of a development project, this has consequences for our results. As they signed up for the project with goals to develop competences and well-being, we can assume that they are people who were interested and open to developing their work and themselves from the start. Furthermore, the age limit of 55 for participants of the study and the development programme can be questioned. Is this age an appropriate lower limit for an “older” category? In previous research and policy, the age for when an entrepreneur enters the stage of seniority or maturity has differed between 40 and 60, and before and after official retirement age (Aydin et al., 2019). As a qualitative study, this article does not provide meaningful data for looking at how the duration of self-employment interacts with gender and age-related experiences of self-integrity. Consequently, we encourage future studies to look into how the years of experience as self-employed play a role in their experiences of self-integrity.

The current entrepreneurship discourse is built upon the individualistic notions of strong agency in the strive to realise one's potential and attain material rewards. This discourse is apparent in policy initiatives promoting women's entrepreneurship (Ahl and Marlow, 2021) as well as entrepreneurship amongst older people (Phillipson, 2019). As a practical implication of this study, we encourage future development programmes implementing policy, to organise meetings and workshops that allow self-employed professionals to get together to engage with and discuss the sources and practices of meaningful work in a respectful and trusting environment. Discussions of how people experience, sustain, and defend their self-integrity as an element and source of meaningful work are needed in the current entrepreneurial discourse in which the norm of what “real” entrepreneurship is remains unfortunately narrow. Experiences related to both the gender and age of the women who participated in this study show that these norms should continuously be challenged and broadened.

Work remains to be done to deconstruct and broaden the slowly changing norm of entrepreneurship as a masculine activity, in connection to meaningful work in general and self-integrity at work in particular. Therefore, we urge you as scholars of gender and entrepreneurship to continue highlighting the power relations of who decides what is meaningful in work and how meaningfulness should be achieved particularly amongst the self-employed.