Empreender entre-nós: contranarrativas de mulheres no turismo de negócios e eventos sob as lentes do empreendedorismo interseccionado

Abstract

This doctoral thesis proposes a critical approach to the field of entrepreneurship by articulating it with intersectionality as an analytical and onto-epistemological key. Based on the experiences of women entrepreneurs in the business tourism and events sector in Brazil, the study seeks to understand the counternarratives constructed in opposition to the myth of the “entrepreneurial hero”—a hegemonic, individualistic, and decontextualized figure that still guides much of the literature and public policy. Structured in three interdependent articles, the research builds a theoretical, methodological, and empirical path committed to the complexification of the entrepreneurial phenomenon. The first article presents a systematic review and thematic analysis of the literature on “entrepreneurship and intersectionality.” The findings highlight the dominance of the Global North, the centrality of gender and ethnicity as analytical markers, and the erasure of the racial dimension—even though race is foundational to the concept of intersectionality—pointing to the urgency of more critical, racialized, and context-sensitive approaches in the Global South. The second article develops a theoretical essay that analyzes the national literature and proposes the concept of “intersectional entrepreneurship” as a critical analytic, recognizing that power relations, social markers, and contextual conditions traverse every entrepreneurial trajectory. Anchored in Black feminist epistemologies, the article proposes mediation categories—reflective practice, contextualization, and collectivity—aiming to build a more plural, reflective, situated, and socially committed field. The third article empirically investigates the trajectories of 15 women entrepreneurs in business tourism and events, revealing how gender, race, class, motherhood, and sexuality intertwine in experiences of exclusion and overload, but also in everyday forms of resistance. The concept of “entrepreneurship among us” emerges from these practices, sustained by care, sharing, and community bonds. By adopting intersectionality as an onto-epistemological and political lens, the thesis contributes to the critical analysis of the multiple dimensions of inequality in the Global South, recognizing knowledge and practices often rendered invisible in dominant literature. The contributions of this work are organized into three axes: (1) methodological, by integrating systematic review, theoretical essay, and situated empirical research; (2) theoretical, by proposing new analytical concepts; and (3) applied, by presenting alternative perspectives to the field of Critical Tourism Studies based on the experiences of racialized women entrepreneurs. Finally, it is argued that entrepreneurship, in this context, is a paradoxical phenomenon: simultaneously a response to precariousness and an arena for negotiating with neoliberal imperatives. Within these dynamics, entrepreneurial survival is collectively woven through networks of affection, solidarity, and reinvention.