Representações femininas da ação empreendedora: uma análise da trajetória das mulheres no mundo dos negócios

Abstract

The increased participation of women in the labor market and hence at organizational level, according to many authors, has been happening through positions that require lower qualifications and skills. However, many women are already reaching higher positions as managers, directors, or even managing their own businesses. In these positions, as they are originally male jobs, women still have to deal with some barriers: gender has a contextual/situational and historical origin. It is needed to be understood in this way by forming themselves into socially constructed discursive practices. The present study sought to understand the social representations of women entrepreneurs on what it means to be a woman in business. Social representations serve as a theoretical framework to reveal the interpretation of the reality of these women about their condition, as well the categories of thought that express, justify, explain and question gender relations in the context of entrepreneurial action. The methodological procedures used in this exploratory study were non-structured interviews with female entrepreneurs about their perceptions of the context in which they are embedded. We used the method of discourse analysis that sought to interpret the meaning of language, i.e., the meanings of instructions to explain the intentions that emerged in the statements of the interviewees.