'Working with the one that you love: Understanding the Copreneurial Experience using a feminist perspective'

Abstract

Existing entrepreneurship literature pays little attention to a feminist approach to understanding business owned by intimately linked couples. This paper explores the dynamic of intimacy and connection that underpins married or cohabiting couples who have started a business together, termed in the literature copreneurs (Barnett and Barnett, 1988). Such businesses are based on the balancing of their fragmented lives that move between public and private spheres. This paper aims to illustrate that for some such businesses there is a gender struggle taking place between the couples desire to be equal participants and their socially constructed behaviours in the business and home . . .