Maternal entrepreneurship: the importance of social networks in enabling businesses run by mothers in Maceió (AL)

Abstract

Motherhood is one of the most important phases for women, however, life after pregnancy brings with it a significant adaptation in the daily lives of mothers, who do not always receive support from their employers and the government. For women who opt for entrepreneurship, there are barriers such as the financial issue, lack of physical space to be able to open a business, lack of support staff, among several other issues. Thus, the research had the main objective of analyzing the importance of social networks in the viability of businesses generated by mothers in the city of Maceió. It also sought to address the reasons that lead mothers to undertake business in social networks; observed the use of social networks as a business tool; and identified the main sectors in which mothers from Maceio are active. The research can be characterized as exploratory and descriptive. As for the means of investigation, it can be seen as field research because it seeks answers to the research questions in its population group, which would be the women from Maceio who decided to open their own business after the birth of their children. For this, a structured form with open and closed questions was used, applied via internet with a non-probabilistic convenience sample of 101 respondents. The results showed that the profile of most entrepreneurial mothers surveyed indicates that they are between 20 and 30 years old, married, have one child, family income between 1 and 3 minimum wages, and have higher education. It was also observed that most see the evening hours as the best time to expand their business and, in addition to social networks, a tool considered to be of easy access and facilitator of the scope of the business, they use other approaches to disseminate their enterprise, and the sectors of food/beverage and Aesthetics/beauty are the most invested in by the mothers surveyed.