Why research on women entrepreneurs needs new directions

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss what research practices cause women's subordination and suggest new research directions that do not reproduce women subordination but capture more and richer aspects of women's entrepreneurship.

Abstract: Research articles on women's 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 women's 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 women's subordination but capture more and richer aspects of women's entrepreneurship.

Summary

What is Meant by Discursive Practices?

• Discursive practices help shape the discourse on any phenomenon.
• A dominant discourse of women as primarily suited for childcare, for example, means that society's institutions are likely to follow suit and favor a social arrangement in which the man is the breadwinner and the woman the caregiver.
• Adapting his discussion to women entrepreneurs as portrayed in research journals, the discursive practices include, to begin with, the preferred research and analysis methods.
• Both are in turn, dependent on a researcher's ontological and epistemological premises.
• I have considered each of these discursive practices based on a multi-method approach, including content analysis, argumentation analysis, deconstruction and genre analysis (Ahl, 2006) .

Effects of Discursive Practices

• The Entrepreneur as Male Gendered Several authors point out that entrepreneur, and entrepreneurship are male gendered concepts, i.e., they have masculine connotations, also known as Discursive Practice 1.
• She writes that deconstruction is a powerful analytical tool, and "the risks are worth it" (Martin, 1990) .
• To see how the founding fathers envisioned the entrepreneur, I therefore selected Hébert & Link's (1988) comprehensive overview of economic thought on entrepreneurship, which begins with French economist Cantillon in the early 1700s, and ends with mid and late 20 th century American scholars.
• The economist Knight's Risk, uncertainty and profit (1933) comes second with 1,377 citations.
• 5 Masculinity and femininity are in Bem's research seen as two separate constructs.

Discursive Practice 2: Entrepreneurship as an Instrument for Economic Growth

• Repeating the analysis, but this time using the word "entrepreneurship", revealed that it is characterized by words such as innovation, change, risk taking, opportunity recognition, driving force and economic growth.
• Third, the established niche is occupied, typically by presenting the outline of the work or its purpose, or by announcing the principal findings.
• In fact, they followed the pattern to the letter.
• Using a table based on Swales' scheme, I inserted the arguments used in each article, and then compared them crosswise.
• As the second and third argument (that they have received increased research attention, and that the resulting research has been flawed) are results of work based on the first argument, one may conclude that economic growth comes out as the legitimate reason for entrepreneurship research.

Discursive practice 3: Men and Women as Essentially Different

• Provided the two previous discursive practices, there is a certain logic to the typical research article.
• There is an idea that men and women would score differently on these scales, and that women would be "less entrepreneurial" than men (Cromie & Birley, 1992) .
• In fact, when controlling for structural factors, there was no evidence of women's underperformance (DuRietz & Henrekson, 2000; Watson, 2002) .
• So gendered measuring instruments may lead to results that confirm hypotheses of differences, even if there are none.

Discursive Practice 4: The Division between Work and Family

• The reviewed articles assume a division between work and family and between a public and a private sphere of life.
• This becomes particularly clear when comparing texts about women's entrepreneurship to general entrepreneurship research.
• They can take care of the children when the husband is at work, and run their business at other times, when the husband is available for childcare.
• Whether a problem, a source of inspiration or an opportunity for society -the family is seen as being separate from work, perceived as the woman's responsibility, and it is taken for granted that the man is the primary breadwinner.

Discursive Practice 5: Individualism

• A fifth discursive practice concerns the individualist focus of entrepreneurship research.
• The texts focus upon the individual entrepreneur and her business.
• Even when structural factors are accounted for, such as access to business education, useful business networks or managerial experience, problems in these areas are still held to be amended by the individual.
• Fischer et al. (1993) introduced feminist thought in this literature by discussing liberal and social feminism.
• The result is that women's subordination to men is not discussed.

Discursive Practice 6: Theories Favoring Individual Explanations

• The preferred theories are congruent with, and reinforce the assumptions discussed earlier.
• References to feminist theory are largely absent.
• Another 4% compare English-speaking countries with another country.
• This means that certain cultural understandings of entrepreneurship, gender, equality and business, dominate and shape research.
• In Sweden, the government recommends women to start day care businesses to provide professional child care for the children of other working parents (Proposition, 1993/94:140).

Discursive Practice 7: Research Methods that Look for Mean Differences

• The preferred research methods entail a further reinforcement of the individualist focus in entrepreneurship research.
• Sample sizes vary from below 20 to above 1,000, but response rates are generally on the low side, if at all stated.
• Researchers may be more likely to publish a study in which a statistically significant difference can be found, however insignificant, than one that shows no such result.
• The preferred methods may also reinforce the idea that explanations are to be found in the individual rather than on a social or institutional level.

Discursive Practice 8: An Objectivist Ontology

• The most common research question in the reviewed articles was related to finding differences between male and female entrepreneurs, but few differences were found, and the results were sometimes contradictory.
• One stated that the research designs were unsatisfactory, with unsophisticated statistical methods, small sample sizes, and convenience samples in combination with insufficient sampling information and/or careless referral practices (Brush, 1992; Moore, 1990) .
• The basis of this critique is that the differences are there -if researchers had only looked well and closely enough, they would have found them.
• Moreover, even if one assumes that there is such a thing as a pre-existing attitude, it is questionable if there is any point in trying to measure it, as research has shown little support for the assumption of attitude-behavior consistency (Abelson, 1972; Foxall, 1984; Wicker, 1969) .
• By focusing on gender as an individual characteristic, rather than as something socially and culturally constructed that varies in time and space, the research tends to overlook structural factors and proposes that women have shortcomings.

Discursive Practice 9: Institutional Support for Entrepreneurship Research

• The training and socialization of researchers may reinforce any of the discursive practices outlined above.
• PhD-students are taught the proper statistical methods to use, and time and money restraints usually mean that research projects tend to favor crosssectional mail surveys, which have all the problems previously discussed, built into them.
• Institutional support in terms of research funding and research centers is also part of discursive practices.
• The last thirty years has seen a rapid expansion, and research financing is increasingly available from both private and public funds (Cooper, Markman, & Niss, 2000) .
• Women become only a variable in the growth equation, in which they are rendered inadequate.

Discursive Practice 10: Writing and Publishing Practices

• Suppose one could disregard all the previous discursive practices, and produce research that questioned gender/power relations in entrepreneurship from, let us say a Marxist feminist perspective, which challenged the primacy of economic growth.
• There is no reason to believe that this was the intention of the authors, on the contrary.
• Making the discursive practices visible, and demonstrating their effects, is the first step in opening up for critical and feminist perspectives.
• Any article in these journals will reflect the specific lexis used and, as the analysis of the composition of the editorial boards showed, the community certainly has a threshold level of members with relevant content and discoursal expertise.

Suggestions for Future Research on Women's Entrepreneurship

• To research women entrepreneurs without reproducing their secondary position would mean challenging the established discursive practices outlined above.
• If anything more could be said, one might call for more care when interpreting research results of statistical differences.
• Instead of using sex as an explanatory variable, one studies how gender is accomplished in different contexts.
• One can use the individual -or the social -perspective as a lens.
• Abandoning the essentialist position of gender as a variable, firmly tied to male and female bodies, and cross-fertilizing with, for example, feminist theory, critical theory, or institutional theory would probably make entrepreneurship research even more rewarding.

Figures

Table 3 Establishing a Territory

Table 5 Research Design of the Empirical Studies

Table 1 Masculinity Words Compared to Entrepreneur Words

Table 2 Femininity Words Compared to Opposites of Entrepreneur Words

Figure 1 illustrates my thoughts.

Table 4 Theory Bases of the Reviewed Articles

Full text

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Citation for the original published paper (version of record):
Ahl, H. (2006)
Why research on women entrepreneurs needs new directions.
Entrepreneurship: Theory & Practice, 30(5): 595-621
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Citation information for this paper: Ahl, Helene (2006). Why research on women entrepreneurs
needs new directions. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice. 30(5) 595-621
:
Why Research on Women Entrepreneurs Needs New Directions
Helene Ahl
Jönköping University
School of Education and Communication
P O Box 1026, SE-551 11 Jönköping, Sweden
Phone: +46 36 101444
e-mail: Helene.Ahl@hlk.hj.se
Abstract
Research articles on women’s 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 women’s 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 which do
not reproduce women’s subordination, but capture more and richer aspects of women’s
entrepreneurship.
Introduction
Several authors maintain that research on women entrepreneurs suffers from a number of
shortcomings. These include a one-sided empirical focus (Gatewood, Carter, Brush,
Greene, & Hart, 2003), a lack of theoretical grounding (Brush, 1992), the neglect of
structural, historical and cultural factors (Chell & Baines, 1998; Nutek, 1996), the use of
male gendered measuring instruments (Moore, 1990; Stevenson, 1990), the absence of a
power perspective and the lack of explicit feminist analysis (Mirchandani, 1999; Ogbor,
2000; Reed, 1996). While fully agreeing with the above, this article takes the critique one
step further and discusses the consequences of such shortcomings and suggests some
ways to amend the situation.
The suggestions are based on a discourse analysis of 81 research articles (73
empirical and 8 conceptual) on women’s entrepreneurship, published between 1982 and
2000, in four leading entrepreneurship research journals
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(Ahl, 2004). The reviewed
articles covered the psychology of women entrepreneurs, their personal background and
business characteristics, attitudes to entrepreneurship, intentions to start a business, the
start-up process, management practices, strategies, networking, family issues, access to
capital, and performance
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.
1
The selection includes all 68 articles on the topic published in Entrepreneurship, Theory and Practice,
Journal of Business Venturing, The Journal of Small Business Management and Entrepreneurship and
Regional Development, which Meeks, Neck, & Meyer (2001) and Ratnatunga & Romano (1997) hold as
the leading journals. An additional 13 articles from other journals were included as they were frequently
cited by authors in the original selection.
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Reviewed Studies in Order of Topic:
Personal Background and Firm Characteristics: Hisrish & Brush (1984), Scott (1986), Birley, Moss, &
Saunders (1987), Holmquist & Sundin (1990), Carter, Van Auken, & Harms (1992), Dolinsky (1993),
Rosa & Hamilton (1994), Dant, Brush, & Iniesta (1996), Shabbir & Di Gregorio (1996), Zapalska (1997),
Shim & Eastlick (1998), Maysami & Goby (1999), Spilling & Berg (2000).

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This article is based on a feminist analysis, which entails the recognition and analysis
of women’s structural subordination to men (Calás & Smircich, 1996). Consequently, it
focuses on the results of certain established research practices regarding power relations
between the genders. These practices, which I call discursive practices, shape the
discourse on women’s entrepreneurship. In the following, I initially discuss feminist
theory and gender and then define discursive practices. Thereafter, I identify such
practices in the reviewed articles and discuss how they position the woman entrepreneur.
The final section suggests some new directions for research on women’s
entrepreneurship.
What is Meant by Gender?
Feminist scholars introduced the term gender to distinguish between biological sex
(human bodies with male or female reproductive organs) and socially constructed sex,
i.e. social practices and representations associated with femininity or masculinity (Acker,
1992). The term has since then been co-opted, however, and is today often used in the
same sense as biological sex – so also in the reviewed articles. By gender the authors
usually refer to men and women, and not to socially constructed sex. They also assume
that men and women differ in important respects – otherwise there would be no reason
for comparison.
This article takes a social constructionist or post-structuralist feminist position
and uses the term gender in the original sense of the word, i.e. as socially constructed.
Where does this belong in feminist theory? Following Harding (1987), feminist theory
could be classified into three groups. In the first group, men and women are seen as
essentially similar, in the second they are seen as essentially different and in the third
group similarities and differences are seen as socially constructed.
The first group, in which liberal feminist theory and feminist empiricism belong,
sees men and women as essentially similar. It is inspired by liberal political theory, i.e. a
human is defined by her ability to think rationally. Men and women are seen as equally
able and any subordination of women must depend on discrimination or on structural
barriers, as for example, unequal access to education. Such barriers can be partly or
totally eliminated. This view has been criticized for having an unstated male norm. It
Attitudes towards Entrepreneurship/Intentions to Start a Business: Scherer, Brodzinsky, & Wiebe (1990),
Fagenson & Marcus (1991), Matthews & Moser (1995; 1996), Kourilsky & Walstad (1998).
Psychology: Neider (1987), Masters & Meier (1988), Sexton & Bowman-Upton (1990), MacNabb,
McCoy, Weinreich, & Northover (1993), Fagenson (1993), Bellu (1993). Start-up Process: Pellegrino &
Reece (1982), Goffee & Scase (1983), Nelson (1987), Shane, Kolvereid, & Westhead (1991), Kolvereid,
Shane, & Westhead (1993), Marlow (1997), Alsos & Ljunggren (1998).
Management Practice and Strategy: Chaganti (1986), Olson & Currie (1992), Van Auken, Rittenburg,
Doran, & Hsieh (1994), Buttner (2001). Networking: Smeltzer & Fann (1989), Aldrich, Reese, & Dubini
(1989), Cromie & Birley (1992), Andre (1992), Katz & Williams (1997). Family: Cox, Moore, & Van
Auken (1984), Nelson (1989), Stoner, Hartman, & Arora, (1990), Dumas (1992), Marshack (1994), Caputo
& Dolinsky (1998). Access to Capital: Buttner & Rosen (1988; 1989;1992), Riding & Swift (1990), Fay &
Williams (1993), Fabowale, Orser, & Riding (1995), Carter & Rosa (1998), Greene, Brush, Hart, &
Saparito (1999), Coleman (2000). Performance: Cuba, Decenzo, & Anish (1983), Miskin & Rose (1990),
Kalleberg & Leicht (1991), Fischer, Reuber, & Dyke (1993), Rosa, Hamilton, Carter, & Burns (1994),
Chaganti & Parasuraman (1996), Buttner & Moore (1997), Lerner, Brush, & Hisrich, (1997), Carter,
Williams, & Reynolds (1997), Carter & Allen (1997), Cliff (1998), Fasci & Valdez (1998), Chell & Baines
(1998), Anna, Chandler, Jansen, & Mero (2000), Boden & Nucci (2000), DuRietz & Henrekson
(2000).Review/conceptual: Stevenson (1986, 1990), Birley (1989), Moore (1990), Brush (1992), Berg
(1997). Other: Baker, Aldrich, & Liou (1997), Nilsson (1997), Brush (1997), Walker & Joyner (1999).

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does not question bureaucracy, leadership, and so on, but advises women to adapt to the
existing order in society (Calás & Smircich, 1996).
In the second group, in which social feminist theory, psychoanalytical feminist
theory or radical feminist theory belong, men and women are seen to be, or have
become, essentially different. Feminine traits are perceived as benefits rather than
drawbacks and as resources to be used constructively (Chodorow, 1988; Gilligan, 1982).
Management research within this tradition has studied organizations which have
attempted to remove the corporate ladder and build flat organizations having shared
leadership and consensus-oriented decision making (Iannello, 1992). This view also does
not question the male norm, it merely provides an alternative, or a complementary norm.
Constructing men and women as different means that one understands “man” and
“woman” to be essential, unitary (and different) concepts, which limits the repertoire of
both sexes.
Social constructionist and post-structuralist feminist theory belong to the third
group. This group is not concerned with what men or women are, but how masculinity
and femininity is constructed and what effects this construction has on the social order.
Gender refers to what is regarded as masculine or feminine and is independent of a
person’s biological sex. Gender is a result of upbringing and social interaction and it
varies in time and place. Gender is something which is “done”, “accomplished” or
“performed” rather than something which “is”. Any seeming stability depends on the
recreation, or repetitive performance of gender (Butler, 1990, 1993).
One is not free to perform gender in any way one chooses. Each culture’s norms
restrain proper gender behavior and these norms have social effects. Social
constructionist feminist work investigates and challenges such norms, or such notions
about gender which are taken for granted. When gender – not sex - is in focus, this means
that the study object goes beyond men and women. Professions, for example, are
gendered, and so is entrepreneurship, as will be demonstrated later. The study object of
this article is neither men nor women, but constructions of gender in research articles
about women’s entrepreneurship.
The article makes no assumptions about differences between men and women.
Neither does it assume that they are alike. Meta-analyses of psychological research on
men and women show that the differences between individuals, even within the same
sex, are invariably much larger than the average difference, if any, between the sexes
(Doyle & Paludi, 1998; Fausto-Sterling, 1992). That is, if one were to plot the test results
on a normal distribution curve, the curve for women and the curve for men would
largely, if not entirely, overlap. The more common assumption, however, is that men and
women are indeed systematically different and that such differences have social effects. I
argue that the assumption of sex differences has little basis in scientific observations, but
have large and important effects regarding the power relations between men and women.
Research, as far as it recreates a binary polarization between groups of individuals based
on their sex, risks reproducing the subordinate role of women.
What is Meant by Discursive Practices?
Discursive practices help shape the discourse on any phenomenon. A discourse, loosely
defined, is how something is presented or regarded. A discourse is never neutral – it has
power implications for the object of which it speaks, in that it forms what is held as
knowledge or truth (Foucault, 1969/1972). A dominant discourse of women as primarily
suited for childcare, for example, means that society’s institutions are likely to follow suit

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and favor a social arrangement in which the man is the breadwinner and the woman the
caregiver. A discourse of men and women as equally fit for careers and childcare will
result in different arrangements, with for instance, public, subsidized childcare so that
both parents can work. Such discourses have implications for the life of individual
women or men, whether they agree with them or not.
Discourse in Foucault’s terminology also includes material and other practices that
shape how something is presented. Such practices are here labeled discursive practices.
Foucault details these in The Discourse on Language (1972). Adapting his discussion to
women entrepreneurs as portrayed in research journals, the discursive practices include,
to begin with, the preferred research and analysis methods. These are informed by
theory and therefore the term also includes the studies’ theoretical points of departure.
Both are in turn, dependent on a researcher’s ontological and epistemological premises.
According to Foucault (1972), the foremost of the practices that shape the research
process are assumptions that go unquestioned. Research on women’s entrepreneurship
holds certain assumptions of business, gender, family, society, the economy and the
individual, all of which influence the research questions asked, the methods chosen and
the answers received. The assumptions also include what is excluded, i.e. factors or
circumstances that are not perceived as relevant for entrepreneurship research.
Each field has its foundational texts, which every author must relate to, whether
agreeing or objecting, and which help shape the research field. Other practices of
importance concern issues of legitimacy – who is allowed to speak on the subject, and
what channels count? The writing and publishing practices of entrepreneurship research
are relevant here, as well as the available institutional support, which both enable and
restrain the research. I have considered each of these discursive practices based on a
multi-method approach, including content analysis, argumentation analysis,
deconstruction and genre analysis (Ahl, 2006).
Effects of Discursive Practices
Discursive Practice 1: The Entrepreneur as Male Gendered
Several authors point out that entrepreneur, and entrepreneurship are male gendered
concepts, i.e., they have masculine connotations. It is not only the frequent use of the
male pronoun (this was standard in science until the 1980s), but also the way the
entrepreneur is described. It could be argued that this is because entrepreneurs have
traditionally been men, but several scholars maintain that women entrepreneurs were
made invisible, in research as well as in the media (Baker, Aldrich, & Liou, 1997;
Sundin, 1988). Other authors discuss male gendered measuring instruments (Moore,
1990; Stevenson, 1990), gendered attitudes to entrepreneurs (Nilsson, 1997), or male
gendered theory (Bird & Brush, 2002; Chell, Haworth, & Brearley, 1991; Mirchandani,
1999; Reed, 1996).
The following feminist deconstruction
3
of some of the foundational texts in the
field clearly demonstrates this point. Foundational texts are those that scholars within any
3
A basic idea of deconstruction is that a text says as much by what it does not say, as by what it says. The
silences in a text can be said to hide or make ideological assumptions appear neutral or absent. Analyzing
them can make the devalued “other” visible. A deconstruction is of course always subject to further
deconstruction – there is no end point where one has “revealed it all”. Feminists have mixed feelings about
it for this very reason. Some feminists favor positive knowledge claims on which to build political action. I
agree with Joanne Martin, however. She writes that deconstruction is a powerful analytical tool, and “the
risks are worth it” (Martin, 1990). Scholars using deconstruction employ a number of systematic strategies
for analyzing the silences and the absences in a text. The technique I have developed here is inspired by

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What are the contributions in "Why research on women entrepreneurs needs new directions" ?

Based on a discourse analysis, this article discusses what research practices cause these results. It suggests new research directions which do not reproduce women ’ s subordination, but capture more and richer aspects of women ’ s entrepreneurship. 

Q2. What are some of Bem’s feminine words?

Some of Bem’s femininity words, such as loyal, sensitive to the needs of others, gentle, shy, yielding, gullible and childlike are the direct opposites of the entrepreneur words. 

Q3. What is the first step in opening up for critical and feminist perspectives?

Making the discursive practices visible, and demonstrating their effects, is the first step in opening up for critical and feminist perspectives. 

Q4. What could be suitable objects for closer study?

Business legislation, family policy, support systems for entrepreneurs, cultural norms, how childcare is arranged, gendered divisions of labor, and so on could be suitable objects for closer study. 

Q5. What is the primary responsibility of the woman in the business?

Her business is constructed as secondary and complementary, both to male owned businesses and to her primary responsibility, the family. 

Q6. What is the research suggestion in quadrant four?

A research suggestion in quadrant four could be a study of the institutionalization of support systems for women entrepreneurs that are common throughout Europe. 

Q7. What are the main reasons why students are taught the proper statistical methods?

PhD-students are taught the proper statistical methods to use, and time and money restraints usually mean that research projects tend to favor crosssectional mail surveys, which have all the problems previously discussed, built into them. 

Q8. What was the common research question in the reviewed articles?

The most common research question in the reviewed articles was related to finding differences between male and female entrepreneurs, but few differences were found, and the results were sometimes contradictory. 

Q9. How did they resist the researcher’s attempts to understand them?

They resisted the researcher’s attempts to understand them by piling up these categories of otherness to auniform picture, but this could only be achieved by their active work of disconnection, by continuously moving “somewhere else”. 

Q10. What is the trend towards entrepreneurship research journals?

The trend is rather towards more streamlining, as the “publish-or-perish” system, including journal ranking, is graining ground outside the USA (Huff, 1999). 

Q11. How many articles claimed that women entrepreneurs did not perform to standard?

Eight percent of the introductions however claimed that women entrepreneurs did not perform to standard, and must be subject to further investigation.