Empreendedorismo materno : sentidos e significados para o grupo "Amor de Mãe" de Belo Horizonte/MG

Abstract

Female Entrepreneurship is configured in characteristics that are inseparable from the social struggles of feminism, which highlighted gender differences. Coming from female entrepreneurship, Maternal Entrepreneurship is a way of designating women who do business as entrepreneurs after the experience of motherhood and who often organize themselves into digital social groups, such as the self-named group of Maternal Entrepreneurship “Mother’s love”, in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, which was chosen for this case study. The woman’s relationship with professional activity, in general, can be modified after motherhood due to the process of construction of the female identity, based on social markers that forge in women their subjective condition and their roles in society. The terms empowerment and entrepreneurship, often associated, seem to speak of common practices and strategies for promoting social changes for women. However, what is perceived is that the terms are often emptied in their concepts and applications, supported by the neoliberal discourse. Our study seeks to identify and understand the senses and meanings of Maternal E ntrepreneurship for the group “Mother’s love”, based on the theoretical concepts of entrepreneurship, gender and female empowerment, characterizing itself as a qualitative exploratory research, which uses as a locus for collecting of documentary data the textual records published on InstagramⓇ ofthe referred group. The thematic content analysis showed that there are two subcategories in common between the thematic axes entrepreneurship and empowerment, namely income generation and women’s collectivity, indicating that the main element that give meaning to the representation of Maternal Entrepreneurship for “Mother’s love” are the generation of income through the collective action of women. Studies that consider gender differences in entrepreneurial behavior favor the advance of theories and the dissemination of discussions that include political and public spheres, beyond the academic environment.