This study explores the intersection of entrepreneurship and social dynamics in precarious environments, particularly focusing on how digital technologies—AI, blockchain, AR, and VR—shape gender equality, social inclusion, and community cohesion. These factors are critical for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Through a mixed-methods approach and snowball sampling of 24 entrepreneurs, the research delves into the lived experiences of entrepreneurs facing discrimination and limited access to resources. Preliminary findings reveal the underrepresentation of these entrepreneurs and the challenges they face due to gender and ethnic biases. The paper assesses the impact of entrepreneurial endeavors on social dynamics and community well-being, offering insights into how entrepreneurship can foster social change and empowerment. The study contributes to the discourse on entrepreneurship in challenging contexts, the role of digital technologies in creating positive social outcomes, and the broader implications for achieving the SDGs.

Purpose: This paper aims to add to the theorization of family dynamics and women’s entrepreneurship by examining women’s influence on decision-making in family businesses. Business decisions in family firms, in particular, are not free from family influence in terms of goals and strategies, and the role of women in decision-making processes is of particular interest. Consequently, the role of women entrepreneurs in family firms and their influence on business development requires a more fine-grained analysis of the family dynamic within the family and the business.

Design/methodology/approachThis study draws on a qualitative study and focuses on the life story narratives of nine women in rural family businesses in rural communities of Småland province in Sweden to empirically examine the decision-making processes. This region is known both for its entrepreneurial culture and traditional gender order. Based on the narrative accounts of women entrepreneurs in family businesses, the data analysis method is thematic, using a Gioia-inspired method.

FindingsThe complexity of decision-making in rural family firms is further complicated in part due to a closeness with the rural community. Thus, a typology of three decision-making modes in family firms emerges an informal family-oriented mode, a semistructured family/employee consensus mode and a formal board mode with at least one nonfamily member. Moreover, the advantages, disadvantages and strategies that women use to influence decisions within the respective mode are outlined.

Originality/valueThis work contributes to the study of women’s agency and its implications in family business and entrepreneurship in the rural context. The study implies that women’s agency shapes the (rural) entrepreneurship context and, likewise, the (rural) entrepreneurship context influences women’s agency. Hence, the author challenges the view of women as only caregivers and sheds light on the practices and processes behind the scenes of entrepreneurial family businesses.

This study examines the dyadic influence of institutional contextual constraints and entrepreneurship in rural contexts. Women and men entrepreneurs influence traditional norms in rural contexts and alter them through emancipation. The emergent themes of emancipation, empowerment, and family business as emancipatory space are present in 30 life stories exemplified by the life stories of four couples managing family businesses in the province of Småland, the southern part of Sweden. The findings reveal that rural family businesses provide women with a secure space that empowers and emancipates them. Fathers play an important role in their daughters' challenging traditional rural norms. The article contributes to the agency theory and constrained entrepreneurship literature.

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to add to the theorization of the entrepreneurship context(s) by examining the influence of rural context in family business decision-making through a gender lens. Undertaking a contextualized view, by applying Welter’s (2011) typology of where and when contexts, and adding “who” (Whetten, 1989) as an element of context enables us to identify an array of factors that encourage or discourage various forms of entrepreneurial activity (Welter & Baker, 2021). This paper takes its point of departure that not only entrepreneurship shapes the context but also context shapes entrepreneurial processes.

The context of the study is family businesses in rural areas, which often are faced with depopulation due to the closing of basic services thus, the younger population, particularly educated women, move to urban areas. Thus, rural family businesses risk closing or moving due to losing customers and family successors for the continuation of the business. The empirical site of our study is rural family firms in Sweden, mainly characterized by a high level of gender equality and culture but also traditional and gender-conservative business structures in the rural. 

 Design/methodology/approach - The empirical case in this paper builds on a qualitative study of twenty-four life course narratives of women and men entrepreneurs in a rural region in Southern Sweden who are engaged in their family businesses. The authors’ view is that women and men as agents navigate their lives and that their life story narratives can provide reflections and insights that inform their perceptions on the influence of the rural context in their family business decision-making.

 Findings – The preliminary findings suggest that the proximity to urban areas plays an important role for rural family businesses as the infrastructure of rural location influences decision-making and business development. 

 Contributions:  This paper contributes to the discussion about the context and agency which has gained increased interest in the last decades (Welter et al., 2019; Welter & Baker, 2021). The contributions extend to the proximity theory where distance to urban areas plays an important role for rural family businesses as the infrastructure of rural locations influences decision-making and business development. Finally, this study contributes to the regional development literature regarding the mobility of women and young men engaging within entrepreneurial places.

Entrepreneurship has gained increasing attention as a strategic area for rural development. Addressing environmental, demographic, and gender inequality challenges in rural areas requires contextualizing entrepreneurship. Moreover, applying contextualization as a critical lens provides a deeper understanding of how and why entrepreneurship happens in rural areas. This thesis examines the interplay between entrepreneurship and gender within the rural context and is situated in the growing body of literature expanding the knowledge on entrepreneurship in rural contexts. Thus, the thesis responds to the calls to contextualize rural entrepreneurship (McElwee & Atherton, 2021) and gender in entrepreneurship (Welter, 2011; Baker & Welter, 2020; Welter 2020). The thesis is based on a qualitative study on the life stories of women and men entrepreneurs engaged in their family businesses in the rural province of Småland in southern Sweden. The thesis further contributes with a systematic literature review describing the “state of the art” in rural entrepreneurship as well as the intertwinement between the rural, gender, and entrepreneurship fields. Methodologically, the thesis contributes to the operationalization of a rural proofing concept. To theorize on the intersection of these three, often separately studied, fields (Webster 2017), the thesis illustrates the dyadic influence of the rural context on entrepreneurship and gender relations. The thesis also provides theoretical contributions concerning the interdependence of the rural context, agency, and entrepreneurship, including the implications of this interdependence for policymakers, and practitioners. Contextualizing rural entrepreneurship and gender in entrepreneurship is crucial in the development of policies able to address the needs and capabilities of rural entrepreneurs to explore the impact of different policies on rural enterprise development (Smith & McElwee, 2014). Rural proofing policies that take into account the particularities of the rural milieu, such as gender, ethnicity, and traditions within the rural community, can increase the resilience of rural enterprises in the face of challenges arising from local and global contexts.

Purpose: This paper aims to add to the theorization of the gender dynamic in rural areas by investigating the motives of women who join their family firm (or their spouse's family firm) and thereby defy the demographic trend of rural flight. The context of this study is the depopulation of rural areas with the closing of basic services and relocation of the younger population, and educated women in particular, to urban areas. Consequently, rural family businesses risk failing to find successors and suffering forced closure or relocation. The empirical site of the study is rural family firms in Sweden, a context characterized by a high level of gender equality in legislation and culture but gender-conservative business structures in rural regions.

Design/methodology/approach: The empirical case in this paper builds on a qualitative study of nine (9) life course narratives of women entrepreneurs in a rural region of Southern Sweden who have returned to rural areas to join their family business. The authors follow the view established by gender scholars that women are active agents in navigating their lives, and their life story narratives offer insight into the considerations that inform their choice to stay or return to rural locations. In Sweden, the setting for the study, gender equality is widely supported by legislation, policy and institutional frameworks and popular understanding of gender relations. In contrast to the gender-progressive policies of Sweden at large, women's entrepreneurship in rural regions of Sweden tends to follow traditional gender hierarchies and face similar constraints as in rural areas of other countries. The juxtaposition of these competing sets of ideals makes Sweden an important and interesting place to study and draw insights from the experiences of women entrepreneurs.

Findings: The findings reveal that women who choose to join rural family firms view them primarily in a positive light and see this choice as aligned with their need for professional flexibility and assertiveness, rewarding relationships, and a calm, secure, well-balanced life. Theoretically, the study implies that women choosing to engage in rural family firms seek non-material benefits, such as work–life balance and social support, and may be driven in part by a sense of psychological ownership that extends to the rural community.

Originality/value: The findings provide novel insights on women as active agents in navigating their lives and the intrinsic (e.g. alignment of personal values) and extrinsic (e.g. community support) motives that inform their decisions. The study also raises questions regarding how women perceive themselves as “fitting in” to rural settings and to what extent the sense of security within these settings that the women describe may be contingent upon factors such as their families' embeddedness within the community as well as their conformity to the local social norms.

Purpose

This paper contributes to entrepreneurship theory by studying entrepreneurs' and local innovation support system actors' visions on rural sustainability. We see that not only entrepreneurs, but also local innovation support system actors, shape the context and thus influences entrepreneurial processes and policymaking.

Approach

This study focuses on rural Southern Sweden, using qualitative narratives from entrepreneurs and local innovation support system actors. These narratives provide reflections and insights that inform their perceptions on addressing challenges of sustainability and innovations in rural contexts. By employing rural proofing to assess context, we identify various factors influencing the entrepreneurship process.

Findings

The preliminary findings suggests that entrepreneurs and local innovation support system actors envision different sustainable futures for rural areas in Sweden. Both rural entrepreneurs' perceptions and local innovation support system actors’ perceptions have the same objective in relation to long-term sustainable rural enterprises such as ecologic farming versus short-term solutions. However, their perspectives on sustainability and innovative ways of doing entrepreneurship differ.

Originality

We are contributing to the growing interest in context, agency, and policy. The interviewed entrepreneurs and local innovation support system actors does not talk the same language when it comes to rural sustainability. This hampers efforts for a sustainable rural future. To foster innovation and sustainability in rural settings, we must systematically assess context and involve both entrepreneurs and local innovation support system actors.

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine how rural entrepreneurship is discussed by analyzing articles in the leading journals of the two main research fields, entrepreneurship studies, and rural studies, through the concept of rural proofing.

Design/methodology/approach

The systematic literature review centers on the two main fields where rural entrepreneurship is studied and covers papers in nine leading journals in entrepreneurship studies and two leading journals in rural studies, between the years 1989 and 2020. In total, 97 papers were reviewed and we utilize and operationalize the rural proofing concept based on Fahmy et al.'s (2004) 3 characteristics of rural: remoteness, accessibility, and rural locale and sense of place. The authors take stock of the dimensions of rural proofing addressed within each of the research fields to find similarities and differences; that is, if articles are rural proofed (or not) when discussing rural entrepreneurship.

Findings

The classification of articles across the three dimensions of rural proofing shows that the field of rural entrepreneurship is being addressed mainly in the dimensions of remoteness and accessibility, while few authors in rural studies journals give priority to the rural locale and sense of place dimension. The results of the authors' review reveal that out of a total of 97 articles on rural entrepreneurship, 56 articles address at least one dimension of rural proofing and 41 articles do not address any dimension. Among the 41 articles not rural proofed, rurality is not problematized when discussing rural entrepreneurship. Instead, the authors focus on specific topics such as social capital, community entrepreneurship/networks, entrepreneurs'/farmers' identity, illegality in rural areas, and institutional framework. The number of non-rural-proofed articles in entrepreneurship journals is almost double that in rural studies journals. This means that authors in entrepreneurship journals do not problematize rurality to the same extent as authors in rural studies journals when addressing rural entrepreneurship.

Research limitations/implications

The authors emphasize the need for increased cross-fertilization between the fields of entrepreneurship and rural studies as an avenue to develop the entrepreneurship field in the direction towards rural proofing. A close collaboration with academia and policymakers is essential to promote interdisciplinary research in order to make a distinctive contribution to rural development. Scholars in either of the two fields will benefit from our review and identification of similarities and differences in the research. The review is one step towards promoting a closer dialog between the two fields.

Originality/value

Previous reviews have focused mainly on what rural entrepreneurship entails (e.g. what topics are discussed) rather than how rural entrepreneurship is discussed. This paper centers on the differences and similarities of the two main fields and provides an in-depth qualitative analysis of how rural entrepreneurship is discussed by utilizing the rural proofing concept.

The field of family entrepreneurship is emerging and increasingly growing and this new research stream incorporates both family businesses and entrepreneurship. Hence, there is a lack of studying family businesses from the point of view of entrepreneurship in rural contexts, particularly the gender dynamics in family firms. Therefore, this study will use a combination of in-depth interviews on family firms as case studies and analysis, in conjunction with literature review on family entrepreneurship and gender. The rural family businesses presented in the study are located in Småland,  an area similar to other rural areas in Sweden with a physical distant location to urban areas; the location matters as it enables and/or constrains entrepreneurs in undertaking entrepreneurial activities. Thus, this paper explores differences and similarities in the views regarding the role of women entrepreneurs in family firms in rural Småland. Hence, the paper contributes to a better understanding of the (in) visibility of women entrepreneurs in family businesses within the mainstream of family entrepreneurship research in the rural setting.