Doing’ gender to ‘undo’ culture: Entrepreneurs’ cultural marginalisation and legitimacy work in (neo)patriarchal societies : In the Shadows: Tales of Cultural Marginalization in Modern Society

Alkhaled, Sophie (2025) Doing’ gender to ‘undo’ culture: Entrepreneurs’ cultural marginalisation and legitimacy work in (neo)patriarchal societies : In the Shadows: Tales of Cultural Marginalization in Modern Society. Research in the Sociology of Organizations. ISSN 0733-558X (In Press)

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Abstract

Organisational research has investigated the systemic and structural marginalisation of communities living in the periphery of the dominant culture. However, there remains a lack of theoretical understanding of ‘cultural marginalisation’ and the strategies used by different marginalised groups to cope with their marginalisation in work and society. In this longitudinal study, I take a postcolonial feminist approach to understand how Saudi women entrepreneurs experience cultural marginalisation and engage in legitimacy work in a neopatriarchal society that is grappling with maintaining tradition during rapid modernisation. Findings illustrate how women entrepreneurs’ legitimacy work involves repositioning their gender role in society through a process of ‘doing gender to undo culture’. This includes reinforcing, maintaining and deconstructing the ideology of the ‘ideal Islamic woman’, and reconstructing it to align with the country’s evolving socio-economic and political vision, which has shifted to describe women as ‘nation builders’. Thus, the women engage in a constant reconstruction of a culturally legitimate ‘moral space’ in society within which the identities of the ‘ideal Islamic woman’ and the ‘Saudi woman entrepreneur’ are not an oxymoron or mutually exclusive. Instead, they are co-dependent and legitimise one another under the arch of nation building, in an ever-changing neopatriarchal society.