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The Gendered Social Construction of Entrepreneurship: The Self-Made Man or the Man-Made Self?
Sally Jones
Although there is no universally agreed definition of the entrepreneur there has been an increasing focus, in education and training for entrepreneurship, on traits and personality based indicators of potential entrepreneurial success. There is also a focus on the entrepreneur as the driver for economic growth and the support of entrepreneurship as a policy driven imperative for economic development. Given the current political importance of entrepreneurship, it could be viewed as a social construct developed, co-opted and re-imagined to suit the perceived needs of our contemporary cultural, political and economic context.
Writers such as Helene Ahl go further, suggesting that there is also an inherently masculine gender construction in received notions of the entrepreneur and definitions of entrepreneurship. This is arguably because it has been theoretically driven by men using male subjects, with ideas suggested by Richard Cantillon in the 18th century being refined and further developed in the 19th century by authors such as Jean-Baptiste Say and Alfred Marshall and leading to Joseph Schumpeter’s influential 20th century interpretation of the entrepreneur.
Given this masculine-framed approach it is unsurprising that entrepreneurship should reflect the concerns and assumptions of the many male thinkers involved in its historical development. Schumpeter was particularly influential in shaping our modern concept of entrepreneurship, invoking ideas of the entrepreneur as combative and status driven, seeking to prove themselves better than others and whose ideas and actions result in ‘creative destruction’.
This all-conquering image of the entrepreneur is still prevalent in today’s economically driven business culture, with programmes such as Dragon’s Den and The Apprentice presenting entrepreneurial success as a battle for resources and recognition. Indeed, celebrated entrepreneurs such as Sir Richard Branson, Sir Alan Sugar and Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou have been knighted in recognition of their ‘specialness’ and their importance to the economic development of the country. These ‘self-made men’ have become cultural heroes, embedded within the public consciousness as ‘true' entrepreneurs and as such are highly visible, high status individuals.
I would argue that entrepreneurship and the entrepreneur, and indeed the concepts of masculinity and femininity, are constructions which have developed historically and socially to suit particular cultural conditions. This has led to the linking of entrepreneurial success with traditionally received ‘masculine’ traits such as risk-taking, aggressive competition, individualism and the pursuit of personal wealth and status. In this way entrepreneurs can be viewed as products of their time and of the values of the society in which they live, raising questions about whether entrepreneurial endeavour and success is situated and dependent on political, local and temporal conditions - both economic and social - rather than as a result of individual behaviour or temperament.
This approach also supposes that ‘being’ an entrepreneur and related entrepreneurial activities are learnt behaviours, with perceptions of our chances of success or failure developing through social relationships and the ‘messages’ received from our family, the media and other institutions. It is linked to the promotion and support of entrepreneurial intent and activity, currently seen as high status and aspirational and actively encouraged and rewarded by society and state.
This raising of status has been manipulated by recent changes in public discourse around business and business ownership. In 1971 the Bolton report suggested that the status of the ‘independent businessman’ was at an all time low and that this was deterring people from business creation and hindering economic growth. It suggested that measures should be taken to make business ownership more attractive, both socially and economically, and I believe that the current focus on entrepreneurship and small business creation is a legacy of this.
Increasingly, as the economy has changed, with large businesses failing and no longer offering a ‘job for life’, small businesses have become the major employers in the UK. To stimulate further business creation we are now encouraged as individuals to develop the skills to employ ourselves and others rather than relying on the state or large businesses to provide us with work; we must be proactive, enterprising, and entrepreneurial and develop the skills deemed necessary to be successful in a global economy.
Unsurprisingly, these apparently necessary skills validate many stereotypically masculine traits such as risk-taking, a competitive nature and the stamina and single minded focus needed to work long, unsociable hours with overtones of the heroic male, the maverick and the self-made man. This has the potential to alienate women and to discount socially constructed and traditionally received ideas linked to femininity.
There is a danger here of elevating masculinity, making it seem ‘natural’ that men would be attracted to entrepreneurship and be good at it. This can also lead to women, who supposedly embody femininity, being seen as somehow deficient or in need of change to better perform in socially sanctioned and accepted entrepreneurial ways. This may explain why so few women compared to men actively pursue entrepreneurship or why they may feel uncomfortable with the term.
Indeed, in my previous work on European funded women’s business support projects, I noticed a reluctance amongst clients to accept the label of ‘entrepreneur’ – with many seeing an entrepreneur as different from them or special in some way when they were ‘just’ running a successful business. A similar distancing from the term has occurred in my current research with female undergraduate students who, when asked 'Do people like you become entrepreneurs?’ view these apparently special, high status individuals as different from them, as being "up there" as one student put it.
This sense of specialness and the idea that only extraordinary individuals can be ‘true’ entrepreneurs significantly raises the perceived status of entrepreneurship and is a potential barrier for those considering their career options in light of this. This is in marked contrast to the status of the ‘independent businessman’ suggested by Bolton in the 1970s.
We seem to have moved from a situation where 'independent businessmen' had little status to one where they now seem almost impossible to emulate or aspire to. In the 2000s, as in the 1970s, high status roles in society are disproportionately held by men and if we add to this the unspoken, taken-for-granted notions around the skills needed to be successful it is unsurprising that proportionately fewer women than men view entrepreneurship, and by association business ownership, as an attractive or viable option.
Of course, if there were an innate capacity, with only the very few ‘true’ entrepreneurs able to succeed, there would be little value in supporting mainstream education and other business programmes that encourage entrepreneurship and seek to identify potential entrepreneurs. Perhaps the most convincing argument against this focus on people being ‘natural’ entrepreneurs or having innate abilities is that most of the research into entrepreneurial indicators has been done on existing entrepreneurs. This strongly suggests that the accepted entrepreneurial behaviours promoted in the historical, political and educational approaches are based on learnt behaviours and attitudes which have developed as a direct result of the entrepreneurial activity itself rather than any pre-existing talents or psychological traits.
With regards the focus on economic factors as a measure of success, a major criticism is that entrepreneurial success is only apparent in hindsight and some successful entrepreneurs have had several ‘failures'. The definitions of entrepreneurial success also vary according to the way we measure them and the relative value that the individual entrepreneur or the wider economic or socio-political agenda places on these. It remains to be seen whether the current economic downturn, apparently a result of high-risk, quick-growth approaches, will see changes in the social construction of 'acceptable' entrepreneurial behaviour and measures of success in the future.
Ultimately, given the historical development of entrepreneurship and its current high status it does seem that entrepreneurial success is traditionally linked to personality 'types' or behaviours that are deemed ‘masculine’ and therefore ‘unfeminine’; unsuitable or unacceptable for women to aspire to given socially constructed concepts of gender roles and the historically male normative approach to research in this field.
Critically re-examining these historically grounded and socially constructed ideas is not to suggest that these theories and concepts are necessarily ‘wrong’ or irrelevant but that, given the increasing focus on encouraging entrepreneurial endeavour by women, the historically masculine-framed basis of entrepreneurship should be re-examined rather than accepted as taken-for-granted or somehow representative of the ‘reality’ of being an entrepreneur. This is an important project, given its enduring influence in shaping perceptions and understandings of this complex historical, political and social phenomenon.
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Sally Jones' Biography
Sally is a PhD student based in the Centre for Research into Higher Education at Leeds Metropolitan University. Previously she managed several successful ERDF and ESF funded business support and training projects in further and higher education institutions. Since 1992 she has taught in the FE, HE, charity and voluntary sectors and has a research interest in gender and post-compulsory education issues, especially around the teaching and learning of enterprise and entrepreneurship.