Purpose – This paper aims to critically analyze media discourses on women owner-managers/entrepreneurs (OMEs) in the Kenyan and Omani newspapers.

Design/methodology/approach – A critical discourse analysis is carried out on a total of 408 onlinemedia articles (174 articles from Omani newspapers and 234 articles from Kenyan newspapers) on womenOMEs over the period 2010-2018. Articles are also classified based on their framing of women’sentrepreneurship.

Findings – Five main categories of media discourses are identified, i.e. discourses on government/institutional initiatives; women OMEs’ dependency; women OMEs’ femininity; women OMEs’ societal impact;and normalization of women OMEs. These gendered media discourses and underlying assumptions furtherperpetuate women OMEs’ subordinate position in society, weaken their social legitimacy and trivialize theirroles as managers and leaders in society.

Research limitations/implications – The analysis was limited to online articles published inmainstream media. Future research could focus on offline print media from smaller media distributors orother distribution channels.

Practical implications – Policymakers and media houses need to pay greater attention to the subtlemechanisms reproducing gender stereotypes. Women OMEs should also take a more active role inconstructing their identity in the media.

Originality/value – This paper highlights the underlying assumptions of media discourses regardingwomen’s empowerment that negatively impacts their social legitimacy. This paper also draws attention tomedia’s role in the trivialization of women OMEs’ leadership and managerial roles and subsequentmarginalization of their social status.