Self-employment, autonomy and empowerment against patriarchal family structures

Abstract

In biographical interviews with self-employed women and would-be female entrepreneurs in the Southern European countries Italy and Greece, a dominant construct became visible whereby the project of establishing self-employment was strongly interwoven with a struggle against patriarchal family structures. However, considerable differences arise on this issue in comparing interviews with women living in the metropolitan region of Athens and interviews with women living in the semi-rural region of Calabria.