Abstract
Existing entrepreneurial discourses have been dominated by white middle-class androcentric approach, giving little space to the discussions of racism and sexism experienced by minority women entrepreneurs. This paper aims to fill this gap through an examination of the experiences of Asian immigrant women entrepreneurs in Canada and Australia using an intersectional approach. The key research question addressed in the paper is to what extent, and in what ways, do racism and sexism impact on the entrepreneurial experiences of Asian immigrant women entrepreneurs and what strategies do they use in managing discrimination to protect themselves and their businesses? Four main strategies were derived from our findings, namely, creating a comfortable niche, playing the mainstream card, swallowing the pain, and resisting.
Highlights
This paper examines the experiences of Asian immigrant women entrepreneurs in Canada and Australia
The first is the growth in entrepreneurship per se, mainly because of a renaissance of the small business sector over the past four decades, in the USA, Australia and Canada (Light & Rosenstein 1995, pp.12-3; Hindle & O'Connor 2005, pp. 1-2)
Data for participation rates as employers and own account workers for 1976, 1986 and 1996 for 19 selected OECD countries shows that Australia had the fourth highest rate of participation in small businesses (32.8 per cent) after Canada (41.2 per cent), the USA at 39.2 per cent and Mexico (36.1 per cent) and that women exceeded 30 per cent of all entrepreneurs in 11 of these countries (OECD 1998, p. 25)
Summary
This paper examines the experiences of Asian immigrant women entrepreneurs in Canada and Australia. The point of departure is the growth in the number of immigrant women who have become entrepreneurs, that is, who have moved into self-employment by taking over an existing business enterprise or starting up a new enterprise. This is itself the result of the intersection to three related international trends. The first is the growth in entrepreneurship per se, mainly because of a renaissance of the small business sector over the past four decades, in the USA, Australia and Canada
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