Entrepreneurship Education for Women—European Policy Examples of Neoliberal Feminism?

Abstract

Entrepreneurship education is seen as a way to get more women into their own businesses. This paper reports on pedagogical interventions designed to accomplish this. Policies on entrepreneurship education produced by the European Union from 2004 to 2018 were categorized according to the research questions: How are women to be educated? What subjects should be taught? And by whom? Policy analysis combined with a neoliberal feminist perspective was applied to understand why entrepreneurship education has not been as successful as expected. Findings show that the ideal teacher is a female entrepreneur whose knowledge just needs to be copied by the students. What is seen as useful knowledge is ideologically selected, including ways of thinking and behaving. According to policy analysis with emphasis on neoliberal feminism, the focus of the policies are not primarily about getting more women into self-employment, but an ideological education about how to think and behave “right.”