ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the role of women-only leadership development programmes in shaping women’s entrepreneurial leader identity. We conceptualise entrepreneurial leadership as the leadership role performed in entrepreneurial ventures, rather than in the more general sense of an entrepreneurial style of leadership (Leitch, McMullan and Harrison, 2012). The enactment of entrepreneurial leadership is a complex process of identity work (Watson, 2009). In essence, identity, which is concerned with an individual’s attitudes, beliefs and behaviours, provides entrepreneurial leaders with a source of meaning from which to operate (Day and Harrison, 2007). However, many leaders of entrepreneurial ventures fail to see themselves as leaders (Anderson and Gold, 2009). This can be exacerbated for women, as the gendering of the dominant entrepreneurship discourse assumes a male entrepreneurial identity ( Bruni, Gherardi and Poggio, 2004 : Hamilton, 2013).
