La fabrique de l’identité par l’entrepreneuriat social : le cas des femmes de quartiers populaires

This study focuses on the social entrepreneurship of women from working-class neighborhoods. In the context of economic, social, and geographical peripheries, they all express a desire to act to see their environment change, as well as optimism about their ability to tackle local problems. Social entrepreneurship takes the form of a catalyst that allows identity (re)construction to take place. The discourse of these social entrepreneurs is in sharp contrast with that of other women also acting in a difficult neighborhood. We position ourselves within a critical approach to women?s entrepreneurship, in line with the work of Lewis (2013, 2015), Ahl (2006), Bruni, Gherardi, and Poggio (2004), and Diaz Garcia and Welter (2011), in particular. We pose the following question: To what extent do women from deprived neighborhoods (re)construct their identity as women and build a singular entrepreneurial identity through the entrepreneurial project? To answer this question, we conducted a social experiment aimed at training women from these neighborhoods in social entrepreneurship. This article relies mainly on eight of the women trained, interviewed several times. Our contribution aims to demonstrate how women from working-class neighborhoods, without privileged social status, build an entrepreneurial identity that is original, gendered, and free from certain constraints, as well as how they reconstruct their identity as women through their project. Several ways of ?re-doing gender,? some of them completely new, are thus suggested by these women. This study thus offers an original point of view on female entrepreneurship and on an ambitious social experiment.