Performing and unperforming entrepreneurial success: Confessions of a female role model

Female role models are increasingly used in enterprise support to encourage women to open businesses. Although varied in detail, their public narratives generally follow a limited number of plots where hard work overcomes all obstacles and leads to emotionally fulfilling, rewarding careers while societally enabled resource accumulation and financial returns are rarely mentioned. This autoethnographic inquiry critically examines one such publicly disseminated role model narrative, the author’s own, and contrasts it with an alternative, unspoken story. Using a narrative approach, performative lens, and insights from the role model literature, it offers a theoretically informed analysis of these contrasting accounts exploring how the relationship between individual agency and social context is occluded in role model narratives. It theorizes a performative paradox where, in order to meet the politically charged imperative to “inspire and empower” disadvantaged aspirants, role models simultaneously perform shared social identity and deny its impact. Implications for enterprise support are discussed.