Female entrepreneurship:

social support networks to solve work-family conflicts

Abstract

With the increase in female participation in the labor market, and the consequent accumulation of roles played by them, women began to experience an increase in conflicts in the work-family relationship. In this context, social support networks emerge that collaborate to minimize the conflicts generated in the aforementioned relationship. Thus, this work aims to analyze how the social support networks of Aracaju entrepreneurs in the food and beverage segment act within the scope of conflicts arising from the work-family relationship. This field research has a qualitative and exploratory character, a semi-structured script was used to interview the six entrepreneurs from Aracaju. The collected data were treated through narrative analysis, where the existence of work-family conflicts was reiterated along with the perception on the part of the entrepreneurs about the existence of a social support network composed mostly of employees and family members. It was also evidenced that the social support networks of the interviewees, in fact, have a fundamental role, but they do not extinguish the conflicts, but rather attenuate their existence, thus making their reality slightly softer.