Unheard, unrecognised and yet learning: discursive struggles for legitimacy in women's informal work

Purpose Informal learning is vital to microenterprises, yet the common view of it as “organic” obscures a contested terrain where women – especially in non-standard roles – must continually negotiate legitimacy, a process shaped by power. We examine how power operates to construct legitimacy in women's informal workplace learning. Design/methodology/approach We adopt a critical discursive psychology (CDP) approach, integrated with legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) – the core concept of communities of practice (CoP) theory – to advance a social constructionist account of legitimacy. Based on nine interviews with women workers in three Czech microenterprises, our framework guided inductive analysis and abductive theory-building. Findings We identify three interpretative repertoires – contextual practice, negotiated practice and personal–social construction – through which women workers negotiated legitimacy in their informal learning. The analysis introduces the discursive legitimacy model (DLM), revealing validation as the key mechanism of voice and visibility and showing that these tensions are stratified more by tenure and employment status than by gender per se. Originality/value We offer novel insights into women's informal learning – both old-timers and newcomers – across diverse employment statuses in under-researched microenterprises. Uniting CoP theory and CDP, we advance a power-sensitive account of workplace learning in resource-constrained contexts.