Copreneurship in rural tourism: exploring women's experiences

Purpose – The paper seeks to explore the experiences of owners of rural tourism accommodation businesses in New Zealand within the framework of copreneurship. It aims to examine roles within copreneurial rural tourism businesses and describes and evaluates women's experiences of entrepreneurship. Design/methodology/approach – The method of the research is a postal survey of rural tourism accommodation business owners complemented by in‐depth interviews with women in copreneurial business relationships. Triangulation of data sources and methods, combining qualitative and quantitative techniques enables a rich understanding of copreneurial expectations, roles and responsibilities and of women's experiences specifically. Findings – The paper finds that the rural tourism accommodation sector in New Zealand is characterised by lifestylers and copreneurs running their businesses as a “hobby” and that non‐economic, lifestyle motivations are important stimuli to business formation. The paper also finds that any perception of copreneurship as a tool for enabling women to become freed from traditional gender roles may not equal the reality as a gendered ideology persists even through copreneurial relationships in rural tourism. Copreneurial couples appear to engage in running the accommodation business using traditional gender‐based roles mirroring those found in the private home. Originality/value – The paper goes some way toward addressing the fact that there exists an underexplored and unarticulated feminine set of processes and behaviours in new venture production. In this research, women's voices were able to come through in both the survey and the interview research and their experiences are reported through their narratives. What is revealed is that a gendered ideology persists even through copreneurial relationships in rural tourism.