Amélie Notais presented her paper “Girlz’n the Hood – Social Entrepreneurial Intention of Women in deprived areas” at the Annual 15th Conference Euram (European Academy of Management) in Warsaw. The paper is a joint work with Julie Tixier.
Abstract : Social entrepreneurship in sensitive areas represents a major societal issue. Even if women seems to have a great role to play, social entrepreneurial intention of women in deprived areas have not been really studied in the literature. This research proposes to investigate this specific topic. For this purpose, we analyse life stories of six women, met in the heart of the “cité des Quatre-Mille”, a disadvantaged area next to Paris, in the city of La Courneuve. Prior researches distinguish between enterprising individuals who are pulled toward entrepreneurship, from those who are pushed into it (Kirkwood, 2009). Our findings suggest that social entrepreneurial intention of women is driven by both push and pull factors. The economic dimension seems to be essential, as those women want to create their own job (push). According to societal, territorial and social dimensions, it’s more about a desire to improve their surroundings and to play a societal and territorial role (pull). The traditional model of pull and push factors is enriched by the integration of collective (and not solely individual) dimensions which appears to be central in social entrepreneurial intention. The challenge of social female entrepreneurship is described as a crystallisation of another way of considering entrepreneurship, which is seen as a way to change the every day life of the women and their immediate environment rather than to change the world.