This research compares the positioning of women entrepreneurs through entrepreneurship policy over two decades (1989–2012) in Sweden and the United States. Given Sweden’s uniquely family-friendly welfare state, we could expect different results, yet in both countries we find a legacy of discourse subordinating women’s entrepreneurship to other goals (i.e., economic growth) and a positioning of women as ‘other’, reinforcing a dialogue of women’s inadequacy or extraordinariness without taking full account of the conditions shaping women’s work experience. From this analysis we derive a conceptual schematic of assumptions presented through the discourse, aligning and distinguishing the U.S. and Swedish approaches