Neoliberal healthism and women’s entrepreneurial subjectivities in yoga

Women entrepreneurs have long encountered the neoliberal expectation to perform as ideal subjects by exhibiting an enterprising femininity. However, existing critical literature on women’s entrepreneurship has largely overlooked how health and wellbeing discourses permeate enterprising ideals and impact one’s subjectivity. This qualitative study explores how 41 women entrepreneurs construct an enterprising subjectivity through neoliberal healthism. Our findings detail who they understand themselves to be by internalizing and at times challenging neoliberal ideals through themes of self-responsibilization, self-optimization, and reflective health. Our main contribution to the critical literature on women’s entrepreneurship is that we conceptualize how an enterprising subjectivity is constructed through the personal optimization of health and wellbeing, fueled by shared-self-care rather than only the logic of market enterprise.