Gender and Entrepreneurship

An Ethnographic Approach

Attila Bruni, Silvia Gherardi, Barbara Poggio, Silvia Gheraradi

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2004
• Print ISBN: 9780415352284
• eBook ISBN: 9781134262885
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Entrepreneurship can be read as a cultural and economic phenomenon. In recent times, gender has become an increasing influence on entrepreneurship. This groundbreaking new study considers both gender and entrepreneurship as symbolic forms, looking at their diverse patterns and social representation. Presenting an ethnographic study of the gender st

1 How a gender approach to entrepreneurship differs from the study of women entrepreneurs

Reflection on the social construction of gender and economics (and business economics in particular) started late in comparison with other scientific disciplines. Its most obvious contentions were the following: men have always dominated the scientific community; gendered attitudes to entrepreneurs make women invisible (Reed, 1996; Mirchandani, 1999); analysis of women’s experiences are inadequate, biased or distorted (Ferber and Nelson, 1993: 2). During the same period, management and organization studies took a ‘gender-neutral’ approach to entrepreneurship (Baker, Aldrich and Liou, 1997), but they did so by studying male entrepreneurs and considering their female counterparts to be only a tiny minority not worthy of particular attention. Moore and Buttner (1997: 13) maintain that until the beginning of the 1980s almost nothing was known about female entrepreneurs, and that entrepreneurship studies concerned themselves almost entirely with men. It was therefore during the 1980s that scientific discourse on female entrepreneurship and women-run organizations began to gain ground. Public attention was directed towards the matter by claiming that it was an emerging social phenomenon. We start from this discursive construct to take a deconstructionist gaze¹ on how it has been asserted as an objectively true point of departure for studies on women entrepreneurs. The discourse on entrepreneurship and the choice of words we use to define entrepreneurship (Gartner, 1993: 232) set the boundaries of how we think about and study it.

Foucault (1972: 49) defines discourses as ‘practices which systematically form the object of which they speak’ and discourses on women entrepreneurs are linguistic practices that create truth effects, i.e. they contribute to the practising of gender at the very same time that they contribute to the gendering of entrepreneurial practices. Therefore if we pay attention to how an ‘entrepreneur-mentality’ is gendered, we can see the gender sub-text beyond the practices of the scientific community studying women entrepreneurs and contrast them with the study of gender as a social practice.

Entrepreneur-mentality

We use the neologism ‘entrepreneur-mentality’ – paying implicit homage to Foucault’s term ‘governmentality’ (1991)² – to highlight how an entrepreneurial discourse is mobilized as a system of thinking about the nature of the practice of entrepreneurship (who can be an entrepreneur, what entrepreneurship is, what or who is managed by that form of governance of economic relations) which is able to make some form of that activity thinkable and practicable, both to its practitioners and to those upon whom it is practised.

The term ‘entrepreneur-mentality’ signals the existence of a discourse on the art of being an entrepreneur and the nature of entrepreneurial practice. Entrepreneur-mentality is constructed through the discursive practices of entrepreneurs, the media that represent their achievements, and the scientific texts that expound theories of entrepreneurship, and in its turn becomes the plot and constraint for entrepreneurial action and discourse.

We now focus on how social studies of women entrepreneurs tend to reproduce an androcentric entrepreneur-mentality which makes masculinity invisible. Our thesis is reflected in a study (Ogbor, 2000) which deconstructs the discourse on entrepreneurship to show that ‘the concept of entrepreneurship seems to be discriminatory, gender-biased, ethnocentrically determined and ideologically controlled’ (p. 629). Social studies have played a part in the discursive construction of entrepreneurship as a male construct which normatively sustains a model of economic rationality allegedly universal and universally applicable regardless of differences in context, class, gender and race (Ahl, 2002). They do so through a single generic process: the ‘othering’ of the non-male. The term ‘othering’ (Fine, 1994; Schwalbe et al., 2000) encapsulates the process by which a dominant group defines into existence an inferior group, mobilizing categories, ideas and behaviours about what marks people out as belonging to these categories. The practices of social scientific research are involved in the process of othering like any other mundane practice, as the above authors note. To focus attention on women entrepreneurs from the implicit standpoint of the dominant culture, or even from a social movement standpoint, contributes to their continual othering.

We argue in particular that even so-called ‘women’s studies’ on female entrepreneurs, or feminist studies on feminist organizations, render masculinity invisible: both – albeit in different ways – portray women’s organizations as ‘the other’, or ‘the alter’, and sustain social expectations of their difference, thereby implicitly reproducing the normative value of male experience.

We shall develop this argument to stress the difference (and the consequences of a failure to differentiate) between studying women entrepreneurs and studying gender as a social practice enacted by women and men within a discursive domain (entrepreneur-mentality) that shapes their actions and their discourse.

We begin with a ‘social fact’ – the increase in female entrepreneurship – and explore the rhetorical strategies deployed for its construction as worthy of attention and therefore as a possible subject for social research. Economic studies – by means of the instruments of quantitative analysis most congenial to them – tell us that the 1990s saw an increase in female entrepreneurship in most of the developed countries (NFWBO, 1995; Duchéneaut, 1997). Socio-economic studies – by means of analysis of statistics on labour-market participation – tell us that the phenomenon differed qualitatively from a simple expansionary trend (Barbieri, 1999). For example, in Italy during the 1990s, self-employment by women was no longer a ‘fall-back solution’ except in a very small number of cases (Barbieri, 1999; Zanfrini, 1999). The majority of self-employed women were now adult, committed to their work on a full-time basis, mindful of the employment choice that they had made, and unwilling to change it. The majority of the dissatisfied women were younger in age and not yet socialized to a career in self-employment, or else they were former dependent employees who had tried to set up on their own and regretted their decision to leave the tranquillity of a steady job. Only a few had entered self-employment or entrepreneurship from unemployment. Barbieri (1999) also points out that a distinctive feature of the 1990s was the specialization and differentiation of occupations and sectors of activity. Those years saw increased numbers of women working in the professions, as partners in cooperatives, in business services and social services; but their numbers declined or were stationary in traditional activities and services like retail and small-scale commerce, or in the traditional manufacturing sectors in which women work as ‘helpers’ for other members of the family. Consequently, female entrepreneurship is now growing in sectors where there is space for professional growth and demand for specialist skills, and it is declining in the traditional and low-skilled sectors. These features are not exclusive to Italy but seem to be shared by the European countries and also by the United States (Barbieri, 1999).

In its turn, the social fact denominated ‘independent female work’ is rhetorically represented as part of the quantitatively broader social phenomenon labelled ‘women’s work’, characterized by the anomaly of the ‘glass ceiling’, that is, by vertical segregation. The close attention paid by social studies since the 1980s to the relationship between women and the economy in the so-called ‘developed’ countries sheds important light on how it has been explained and how it has been institutionalized.

An articulate explanation (Adler and Izraeli, 1988, 1994), has used the following arguments:

• The dramatic increase in female employment since the Second World War. The greater visibility of female work has led to realization that women as human capital are under-utilized.
• The interest that institutional actors (political, economic and in research) now show in demographic changes. Declining birth rates in the more developed countries will give rise to a shortage of skilled male labour.
• The globalization of the economy is driving a search for ‘excellence’ and for new competitive advantages. There is a consequent need to maximize the potential of the human resource in all its forms.
• The demand – ever more explicit and insistent – advanced by women for access to higher managerial positions as a consequence of their greater investment in education and training. Companies find it increasingly difficult to ignore female potential when recruiting or promoting employees.

Evidently, these four explanatory factors – the quantitative importance of an ‘objective’ phenomenon, its subjective salience on a scale of importance, the global economic dimension, and the formation of a social demand – are also the criteria for legitimation of a ‘scientific fact’ among the producers of knowledge. Thus, in the entrepreneur-mentality, the increase in women entrepreneurs during the 1990s was an unquestioned, objective fact and a scientific topic (Gutek and Larwood, 1987; Powell, 1993; Fisher, Reuber and Dyke, 1993).

We may therefore say that the institutionalization of a line of inquiry situated in the assumption that enterprise is a rational economic activity, and in a conception of gender citizenship (Gherardi, 2003b) as cultural integration through equal opportunity policies, has encouraged research on women entrepreneurs, while also promoting economic and labour policies targeted specifically on that category of women. Moreover, in a Europe marked by the considerable importance and homogeneity of Community policies transposed into national ones and the widespread presence of SMEs, the issue of women entrepreneurs centres on their importance as actual or potential actors in new models of local development, either because they own or run small firms or because – thanks to public intervention – they can be given opportunities to start new ones.

Whereas the figure of the woman entrepreneur has entered the discourse of the scientific community, its representation by the media still clings to the old gender stereotypes. We briefly review the findings of a study of the Italian economic press conducted at the same time as our research (Bourlot, 1999; Magatti, Monaci and Ruggerone, 2000: xxiv–xxvi):

• Female protagonists are frequently described as mavericks, more ruthless and determined than their male counterparts.
• The conservatism is apparent in stereotypes of the iron lady, the boss’s girlfriend who becomes his wife, the heiress. Besides being dismissed as a factor for change, female entrepreneurship is generally viewed as marginal to the dynamism of the firm.
• Female entrepreneurs are described mainly in relation to the family business and in terms of their family role. A woman entrepreneur is such inasmuch as she belongs to a family of entrepreneurs; she is the designated heir flanked by a male spouse or relative. A constant theme is the difficulties of these women in balancing work and domestic duties. The assumption is therefore that their natural place – and their primary social responsibility – is the family.

The role of the media in the social construction of entrepreneurial discourse is all the more important because they replicate themes and notions in the specialist literature, which they merely popularize. Hence both scientific texts and the specialized press render the ‘naturally’ male gender of the entrepreneur invisible and uncontroversial. Not only is an entrepreneur usually a man but also the rhetorical figure of the ‘family business’ is constructed more on the business than on the family, which is treated as a non-cultural, non-historical, apolitical and even non-emotional entity (Katila, 2002). The understanding that also the family is constantly created by ongoing societal discourses and practices prompted Sajia Katila to investigate the moral order (what is valuable in a family and worth striving for, and what are the basic principles according to which one of its members is expected to behave) in Finnish agricultural family businesses. The family as stereotype removes from critical scrutiny the fact that both women and the family have changed. While the family plays a role for women entrepreneurs – as most studies state – male entrepreneurs are not asked questions about work–home conflict (Ahl, 2002).

Having delineated the cultural context in which entrepreneur-mentality is grounded, and the most widespread reasons in the scientific community for legitimating the study of women entrepreneurs, we may now inquire as to the consequences of such research. We shall investigate two bodies of literature in particular – business economics literature and studies of feminist organizations – and the consequences of their implicit assumptions on gender in terms of a ‘gendered’ politics of knowledge. We shall explore their gender sub-text: that is, how gender is (re)produced through power-based processes underlying relations presented as abstract, neutral and objectified (Smith, 1990; Benschop and Doorewaard, 1998). Our argument will be that their gender sub-texts discursively operate – albeit in different ways – toward a common process of ‘othering’ women entrepreneurs and rendering masculinity invisible. A gender approach – which considers gender as a material and discursive practice – is therefore more suited to revealing the reciprocal construction of masculinity and entrepreneurship.

Women entrepreneurs: the victims of gendered research practices

Our purpose in this section is not to conduct an exhaustive survey of the literature on female entrepreneurship but to bring out the gender sub-text implicit in it, and the consequences. In discussing the literature, we shall refer mainly – though not exclusively – to an internal working document (Monaci, 1998)³ which describes the state of the art mainly with reference to Europe. Since a similar state of the art is presented by other literature overviews (Franchi, 1992, 1994; Brush, 1992; Magatti, Monaci and Ruggerone, 2000; Ahl, 2002), we take it as representative of the discourse on women entrepreneurs.

Studies on female entrepreneurship⁴ are broadly divided among five thematic areas (Monaci, 1998):

1. the ‘breeding grounds’ of female entrepreneurship;
2. patterns of female entrepreneurship;
3. the barriers against female entrepreneurship;
4. the motivations of women entrepreneurs;
5. the organizational and managerial methods – the ‘enterprise culture’ – of women entrepreneurs.

We shall now investigate how implicit assumptions on gender relations have steered research and the production of scientific knowledge. In examining each of the above five areas, we shall first set out the arguments adduced in support of the diversity of female entrepreneurship. We shall then deconstruct these arguments to show that the rhetorics used to explain diversities support a process of othering. A table (Table 1.1) will summarize the elements making up the gender sub-text of the business studies literature.

The ‘breeding grounds’ of women’s entrepreneurship

The business economics literature reports that the great majority of women entrepreneurs are not only concentrated in the tertiary sector (commerce and especially services) but also began work in that sector, the traditional area of dependent female employment. At least three arguments have been mobilized in explanation of the tendency for women to create new businesses mainly in services:

1. It is the sector of which they have most knowledge and experience.
2. The fact that women frequently lack specific technical skills tends to dissuade them from starting businesses in the manufacturing and high-tech sectors, and also reduces their likelihood of surviving in those sectors.
3. The greater difficulty encountered by women in obtaining financial resources induces them to choose low capital-intensive activities, like those in the services sector.

Besides the patterns of female entrepreneurship just outlined (concentration in the tertiary sector, relative discontinuity with previous work experience), at least two further features have been identified in the business literature (Monaci, 1998): (i) the small size of businesses created and run by women;⁵ (ii) the lower profitability in terms of turnover or sales of female businesses compared to male ones.⁶

This description reflects a state of affairs evinced by the statistics and by quantitative research (Franchi, 1992; Rosa et al., 1994). It is therefore socially regarded as reasonable and plausible. But to what extent does the researcher’s understanding of gender relationships shape the way research is done and explanations are offered (i.e. how the knowledge produced contributes to the reproduction of gendered policies)? And with what consequences? Let us take a deconstructive look at the above explanations.

In the first instance women entrepreneurs are represented as constructing ghettos within entrepreneurship, notably in more backward sectors where skills are an extension of what has been naturally learnt through gender socialization; sectors that are easier to enter and which therefore have little value. Women entrepreneurs are ‘the others’ with respect to the humus on which the entrepreneurial character is rooted and with respect to the grounds – the sectors – in which it develops.

In the second instance female entrepreneurship is connoted with the devaluation implicitly associated with the ‘female’ gender, and this devaluation is perpetuated in the prescriptive literature, which urges women entrepreneurs to assume the values of rational action: orientation to results, efficiency, control, competition. Thus the values of entrepreneurship are institutionalized as male and ‘superior’, while female entrepreneurship is represented as the result of gender properties: its ‘weakness’ is the ‘natural’ expression of the weak sex as reflected in society and the economy. But what are the consequences of such a gender representation in academic knowledge? The disciplines that study organizations, management, or business economics have institutionalized as ‘objective and universal knowledge’ the experiences of the ‘strong’ entrepreneurship manifested by male entrepreneurs operating in market conditions different from those faced by female entrepreneurs. Thus, female entrepreneurs are ‘the other’ in terms of which the male entrepreneur is defined, so that the academic disciplines represent experiences and points of view of only one part of the entrepreneurial phenomenon. Masculinity constructs the definition of entrepreneurship, and male entrepreneurship is used as the benchmark for entrepreneurship as a whole.

The feminist critique has for some time attacked the tendency of researchers who study women to use men as their standards of comparison (Calvert and Ramsey, 1992), to construct the experience of women as ‘other than’ (Irigaray, 1974) and to ask ‘why aren’t they like us, or how can they become like us?’ (Nkomo, 1992: 496). Because the production of knowledge is based on gendered ideas, it maintains and reproduces a system of gender relations which renders masculinity invisible while giving corresponding visibility to ‘other’ experiences – whether these are firms owned by women or by non-white, non-heterosexual entrepreneurs who do not compete in the market as the canons of the for-profit enterprise dictate. For mainstream researchers, ‘other’ entrepreneurship becomes visible when it is viewed using the anthropological categories of diversity and with a desire to assimilate minorities. A knowledge constructed on implicit gender assumptions thus becomes in its turn an instrument of dominance because it is used to draw boundaries among categories of persons, to exercise control over resources and to devise support policies for a category of persons labelled as second-sex entrepreneurs.

Patterns of female entrepreneurship

Against the background of the trends just described, attempts have been made to draw up typologies of women entrepreneurs. If the best-known classifications are combined (Goffee and Scase, 1985; Cromie and...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 How a gender approach to entrepreneurship differs from the study of women entrepreneurs
• 2 Gender as a social practice, entrepreneurship as a form of masculinity
• 3 Doing and saying gender
• 4 Company ethnographies
• 5 Gender and entrepreneurship as discursive practices
• 6 ‘Doing family’ while doing gender and business
• Appendix: ethnography of practices and ethnographic practice
• Notes
• References