Gender Identities and Future Visions Across X and Y Generations: Experiences of Women Entrepreneurs

Abstract

This study examines how generational values shape women entrepreneurs’ discourses on entrepreneurship and the ways in which different age cohorts construct, negotiate and perform entrepreneurial identities within gendered social structures. Drawing on interviews with 24 women entrepreneurs from Generation X and Generation Y, the analysis explores how generational positioning influences narratives of agency, ambition and autonomy, as well as how women envision their entrepreneurial futures through five-year plans. The study conceptualises entrepreneurship as a discursive and identity-building space and employs a performative, relational view of gender to analyse how women articulate gender within a masculine-coded entrepreneurial field. Using the Appreciative Inquiry method, the study uncovers empowering dimensions of women’s experiences while revealing generational differences in interpretations of growth and gender. Generation Y emphasise autonomy, flexibility and self-development yet describe these ideals ambivalently, whereas Generation X entrepreneurs frame growth more pragmatically, prioritising stability, continuity and manageable workloads. The findings demonstrate how shifting cultural norms and sociohistorical contexts shape women’s entrepreneurial identities, highlighting the coexistence of post-feminist empowerment discourses with enduring gendered constraints and structural inequalities.