Helene Ahl

Why Research on Women Entrepreneurs Needs New Directions

Research articles on womens entrepreneurship reveal, in spite of intentions to the contrary and in spite of inconclusive research results, a tendency to recreate the idea of women as being secondary to men and of womens businesses being of less significance or, at best, as being a complement. Based on a discourse analysis, this article discusses what research practices cause these results. It suggests new research directions that do not reproduce womens subordination but capture more and richer aspects of womens entrepreneurship.

Exploring the dynamics of gender, feminism and entrepreneurship: advancing debate to escape a dead end?

Contrary to the neo-liberal thesis that entrepreneuring is an open and accessible endeavour where personal effort alone determines reward and status, it has been demonstrated that there is a persistent, but occluded, gender bias within the entrepreneurial discourse. Accordingly, women are positioned as lacking and incomplete men; however, despite calls to employ feminist theory as an analytical frame to demonstrate the reproduction of such subordination, there is scant evidence this has emerged. Within this article, we respond to this call by demonstrating how post structural feminist analysis reveals the gendered assumptions informing entrepreneurship theory that embed prevailing hetero-normative assumptions. These assumptions limit the epistemological scope of contemporary research which positions women as failed or reluctant entrepreneurial subjects; as such, in the absence of feminist theorizing these analyses remain descriptive rather than explanatory. Accordingly, the current entrepreneurial research agenda is in danger of reaching an epistemological dead end in the absence of a reflexive critical perspective to inform the idea of who can be and what might be an entrepreneur. Finally, we draw upon these arguments to reflect upon current approaches to theorizing within the broader field of entrepreneurial enquiry.

Gender and entrepreneurship research: A review of methodological approaches

This article presents the findings of a systematic literature review (SLR) of the gender and entrepreneurship literature published in 18 journals over a 30-year period. The SLR sought to identify methodological trends in the field of gender and entrepreneurship and to critically explore the type of methodological innovations needed in future scholarship. Findings reveal a proliferation of large-scale empirical studies focused on male/female comparisons, often with little detail provided on industry sector or sampling methods and with either a weak, or no feminist critique whatsoever. We argue that future scholars must develop the methodological repertoire to engage with post-structural feminist approaches; this may require a radical move towards more innovative, in-depth qualitative methodologies such as life histories, case studies or discourse analysis.

Moving forward: institutional perspectives on gender and entrepreneurship

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a re‐directed and purposeful attention to the design of research on gender and entrepreneurship moving forward.Design/methodology/approach – The paper questions the value of more studies on the men v. women binary and encourages research on the institutions supporting the gendered construction.Findings – The paper suggests a re‐framing of gender (to include men, women, femininity, masculinity, etc.) both in topics investigated and in building the cadre of scholars engaged. It asks for discrimination of gender from biological sex in language use and believes that dialogue will be improved if the word “gender” is maintained as a socially constructed phenomenon directed at distinguishing the norms around “what women do” and “what men do”. Researchers, too, must necessarily confront personal pre‐existing ideas and language shaped by the norms and habits of ones upbringing and daily life in societies that are not acute observers of gender in action.Originality...

Book Review: Women and Entrepreneurship: Contemporary Classics

This is a long-awaited and very useful collection of 30 research articles on entrepreneurship, published in some of the leading entrepreneurship journals and dating from 1976 to mid-2004. The editors have made a careful from a total of about 370 articles. The collection aspires to give an overvi fi eld, show the progression made during the years, and make it possible t outstanding questions, thus providing a launching pad for future research The fi rst part comprises six articles under the heading ‘theory’. The fi rst tw conclude that even if there were few innate differences between men an entrepreneurs, they tended to own different types of businesses. Women’s b were typically in retail and services, smaller and grew slower than men’s. ing feminist theory in this literature, Fischer et al. proposed to explain lesser performance either because of discrimination against women (libera theory), or because women make different choices due to gender socializati feminist theory), however with mixed research results. While not using any explicit feminist framework, Brush suggested tha do indeed make different choices and posited an ‘integrated perspective women both attempt to and want to integrate business, family and social l affects their entrepreneurial choices and strategies. This approach is extend and Brush who hold that since entrepreneurship is male gendered, it may quately describe the experiences of women. They suggest an alternative, view of organization creation, which is characterized by, for example, com to people, trust, and participative decision-making, as opposed to a more masculine view. They also suggest that people with ‘gendered maturity’ w integrate these views in their approach to business creation. The fi nal article in this section, by Greer and Greene, is critical tow tendency in the previous articles to look for explanations in women’s soc or in women’s choices, and instead argues for a Marxist feminist perspec perspective draws attention to the gendered division of labour with me market and women both on the market and carrying the main respons the unpaid work at home. This does indeed affect women’s behaviour opportunities, but it is not a question of individual choice, but rather a and political problem and should be addressed as such. Section two, ‘human capital and cognition’ begins with an article on tr ences between male and female entrepreneurs, fi nding most traits to be International Small Business Journal Copyright

Women and Humanities: Allies or Enemies?

Management Education and Humanities argues that management teachers and researchers seem to be increasingly dissatisfied with the way managers are usually educated in western countries. It claims that educational practices and methods would greatly benefit from reflection on the implicit assumptions and paradigms behind those practices, and debates the role that humanism and humanities might play in the formation of new managerial elites.

Analysing entrepreneurial activity through a postfeminist perspective : A brave new world or the same old story?

This edited book inserts postfeminism (PF) as a critical concept into understandings of work and organization. While the notion of PF has been extensively investigated in cultural and media studies, it has yet to emerge within organization studies - remaining marginal to understandings of work based experiences and subjectivities. Understanding PF as a discursive cultural context not only draws on an established epistemological orientation to organizations as discursively constructed and reproduced but allows us to highlight how PF may underpin and be underpinned by other discursive regimes This book, as the first in the field, draws on key international authors to explore: the contextual ‘backdrop’ of PF and its links with neo-liberalism, transnational feminism and other hegemonic discourses; the different ways in which this backdrop has infiltrated organizational values and practice through the primacy attached to choice, merit and individual agency as well as through the widespread perception that gender disadvantage has been ‘solved’; and the implications for organizational subjectivity and for how inequality is experienced and perceived. This book introduces postfeminism as a critical concept with contemporary importance for the study of organizations, arguing for its explanatory potential when: - Exploring women’s and men’s experience of managing and organizing; - Investigating the gendered aspects of organizational life; - Analysing the contemporary validation of the feminine and the associated feminization of management/leadership and organizations; - Tracing the emergence of new femininities and masculinities within organizational contexts. The book is ideal reading for researchers working in the area of Gender and Organization Studies but is also of interest to researchers in the areas of Cultural Studies, Media Studies, Women’s Studies and Sociology.

Motivationsteori som verktyg för styrning och kontroll

Baserat på en kritisk läsning av teorier om motivation och vuxnas lärande ifrågasätter den här artikeln att man förlägger orsaken till att man inte vill utbilda sig till motivationsproblem hos den enskilde. Problemet finns snarare hos den som formulerar problemet. Vidare innebär en lokalisering av problemet till den enskilde maktutövning. Det riskerar att stigmatisera och marginalisera denne, samtidigt som den som formulerar problemet och de grunder på vilka problemet formuleras osynliggörs. Istället för att undersöka vad som motiverar vuxna att studera föreslår jag att forska om vem som säger att detta är ett problem, och varför. På så sätt synliggörs hur diskursen om det livslånga lärandet som en oundgänglig respons på tekniska och ekonomiska förändringar framställer individer som otillräckliga.