Postfeminism and Entrepreneurship: Exploring the Identity of the Mumpreneur

This chapter contributes to the developing body of research that considers identity as an aspect of business ownership by examining the emergence and representation of the mumpreneur as an entrepreneurial character, understood here as a woman who runs a business from home alongside the active parenting of children and the management of a household. Conventionally the identities of 'entrepreneur' and 'mother' are perceived as being mutually exclusive and oppositional with motherhood being understood as significantly problematic for entrepreneurship. However, the emergence of the new entrepreneurial identity of the mumpreneur appears to suggest that these identities are no longer in tension. As a means of exploring the new entrepreneurial identity of mumpreneur, the materialization of which is based on contemporary women's willingness to be a subject of economic capacity while also taking up the traditionally marked out roles of mother and wife, attention will be directed at the issue of femininity in its changed postfeminist form and how this relates to entrepreneurship.