The role of gender stereotypes in perceptions of entrepreneurs and intentions to become an entrepreneur.(Report)

In this study we examine the role of socially constructed gender stereotypes in entrepreneurship and their influence on men and women's entrepreneurial intentions. Data on characteristics of males, females, and entrepreneurs were collected from young adults in three countries. As hypothesized, entrepreneurs were perceived to have predominantly masculine characteristics. Additional results revealed that although both men and women perceive entrepreneurs to have characteristics similar to those of males (masculine gender-role stereotype), only women also perceived entrepreneurs and females as having similar characteristics (feminine gender-role stereotype). Further, though men and women did not differ in their entrepreneurial intentions, those who perceived themselves as more similar to males (high on male gender identification) had higher entrepreneurial intentions than those who saw themselves as less similar to males (low male gender identification). No such difference was found for people who saw themselves as more or less similar to females (female gender identification). The results were consistent across the three countries. Practical implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Introduction

Gender differences in entrepreneurial activity are well documented in the literature (Gatewood, Carter, Brush, Greene, & Hart, 2003; Reynolds, Bygrave, & Autio, 2004). Though in recent years the number of women entrepreneurs has increased dramatically (De Bruin, Brush, & Welter, 2006), empirical evidence indicates that still almost twice as many men as women become entrepreneurs, and that these differences are consistent across countries (Acs, Arenius, Hay, & Minniti, 2005). However, entrepreneurship scholars have limited understanding of the factors and decision processes that influence men and women differently to pursue (or not) entrepreneurship and become self-employed (Verheul, 2005; Zhao, Seibert, & Hills, 2005). In this study we examine the important relationship between gender stereotypes--widely shared beliefs about characteristics attributed to men and women--and entrepreneurial intentions of men and women.

Recent discussions in the entrepreneurship literature suggest that glaring and persistent differences between men and women's entrepreneurial activity may be associated with gender characterization (Carter, Anderson, & Shaw, 2001; Greer & Greene, 2003; Marlow, 2002). More specifically, scholars argued that socially constructed and learned ideas about gender and entrepreneurship limit women's ability to accrue social, cultural, human, and financial capital and place limitations upon their ability to generate personal savings, have credit histories attractive to resource providers, or engage the interest of loan officers, angel investors, and venture capitalists (Carter & Rosa, 1998; Gatewood et al., 2003; Marlow & Patton, 2005). These factors are believed to interact to influence the kinds of ventures men and women entrepreneurs start as well as its subsequent development. For example, women entrepreneurs are more likely than men to have businesses (often in the service or retail sector) that are smaller, slower-growing, and less profitable (Carter et al.), which in turn then reinforces the stereotypical image of men and women in self-employment (Carter & Williams, 2003).

Though there is a large body of literature that looks at men and women in entrepreneurship, very few studies use the "lens of gender" as opposed to sex (Baines & Wheelock, 2000, p. 45; Bem, 1993; Marlow & Patton, 2005, p. 719). The distinction between sex as ascribed to biology, anatomy, hormones, and physiology, and gender as constructed through social, cultural, and psychological means is an important one in the social sciences (Ahl, 2006; West & Zimmerman, 1987). Where sex (male and female) is innate and refers to what people are born as, gender is what people "do" when they attribute a circumscribed meaning to male and female (Bruni, Gherardi, & Poggio, 2004a). Gender is not simply one aspect of sex, but, more fundamentally, it is something one does, and does recurrently, in interaction with others (Butler, 1990). In this sense, gender is not a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts proceed; rather, it is an identity tenuously constituted through a "stylized repetition of acts" (Butler, 1988, p. 519; Butler, 1993).

More broadly, the stereotypical characteristics attributed to men and women in society influence the classification of various occupations as masculine or feminine, which tends to affect people's aspiration and inclination toward such jobs (Cejka & Eagly, 1999). For example, men, compared with women, are assumed to and tend to be more inclined to participate and excel in math and science, while women, compared with men, are more inclined toward arts and languages (Nosek, Banaji, & Greenwald, 2002). Scholars interested in the relationship between gender and career choices contend that men and women's preferences are a reflection of their knowledge about gender-related characteristics associated with the task (gender-role stereotypes) as well as their identification with masculine or feminine characteristics (gender identification).

In this study, we examine the impact of widely held gender stereotypes on differences in men and women's intentions to pursue entrepreneurship. If gender stereotypes are related to entrepreneurial intentions, it would indicate that intentions are a reflection of culturally produced and socially learned constraints imposed by such stereotypes, rather than psychological differences rooted in biology (e.g., women have lower "energy level" and less "risk-taking propensity" than men; Sexton & Bowman-Upton, 1990). In examining the relationship between gender stereotypes and entrepreneurial intentions, we respond to scholarly calls for research on entrepreneurship as a gendered process (Lewis, 2006; Marlow & Patton, 2005; Mirchandani, 1999). These researchers suggest that gender characterization processes may explain differences in men and women's entrepreneurial activity and they encourage entrepreneurship scholars to examine how socially constructed gender, rather than biological sex, influences the type and rate of entrepreneurship among men and women. We believe we are the first to explicitly propose and examine the impact of gender-role stereotypes and gender identification on entrepreneurial intentions. Our focus on social construction of gender and entrepreneurship allows us to empirically examine a theoretical explanation for the well-known paradox that although entrepreneurship is widely recognized as an attractive and worthwhile career for women (Heilman & Chen, 2003), the rate of entrepreneurship among women remains much lower than men (Reynolds et al., 2004). We test our hypotheses using data collected from young adults in the United States, India, and Turkey.