Support for women's entrepreneurship: a Nordic spectrum

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse national state support programmes for women's entrepreneurship, in the Nordic countries, from a gender perspective. Design/methodology/approach From an analytical gender perspective based on a combination of Mayoux's framework of paradigms in support of women's entrepreneurship, Rees' approach to gender equality and Bacchi's analysis of what the problem is represented to be, the author performs a systematic comparative analysis of the varying policy goals, underlying paradigms and approaches in state support programmes for women's entrepreneurship in the Nordic countries. Findings The author concludes that all Nordic countries, with the exception of Iceland, have a programme or an action plan to support women's entrepreneurship, but vary in their underlying paradigms and rationales. The author places Norway at one end of the spectrum because its policy programme is most clearly influenced by a feminist empowerment paradigm intended to transform and/or tailor the existing support system through various measures. At the other end of the spectrum is Denmark, which most clearly focuses on economic growth in line with a neo‐liberal paradigm. Between these extremes, are Sweden, Finland and Iceland. The analysis reveals that state support programmes, in the name of supporting women entrepreneurs, tend to put women in a subordinate position to men and thereby risk sustaining a male norm. Originality/value The paper contributes a much‐needed systematic comparative analysis of support for women's entrepreneurship in the Nordic countries. This analysis is important in order to further the discussion of how policy actors can refrain from putting women in a secondary position to men, and thus avoid sustaining a male norm in entrepreneurship support.