Overcoming the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Gender Divide: A Cross-Cultural Perspective

Research has convincingly demonstrated that women are underrepresented in successful entrepreneurial ecosystems, and that a persistent gender bias continues to exist in entrepreneurship, affecting who gets supported in, and by, the system. By providing a nuanced understanding of how gender is a decisive factor, i.e., how women and men are influenced by and, in turn, influence entrepreneurial ecosystems differently, the GENRE project have contributed to insights on how to remedy gendered problems and make your entrepreneurial ecosystem more inclusive. In GENRE, we have found that women must enact credible identities to address the tensions arising from the stereotypical notion of the tech entrepreneur as male. We have learned that gendered understandings of technology and entrepreneurship influences investor behaviour and influences the perceived legitimacy of male and female technology entrepreneurs. The assessments are vague and gender inequality is often implicit, difficult to locate and identify. Despite seemingly gender-neutral assessment criteria these are used in different ways in the assessment of women and men to the advantage of men. While there are obvious similarities across the four studied countries, in terms of size, population and economies, there are also obvious differences to consider across the studied ecosystems. Sweden and Norway are countries with long traditions of working with gender equality issues from a public policy side. Despite policies and welfare systems in place to facilitate equal participation on the job market for both men and women, the labour markets in each country are strongly gender segregated. Israel and Ireland stand out with strong values associated with family and religious values influencing society – including strong family norms. Despite the differences, the associations between men, masculinity and tech entrepreneurship remains a strong theme across all four ecosystems. One of the key challenges identified by the GENRE project is how gender inequality in technology entrepreneurial ecosystems can be implicit, even unintentional, described as a “grey zone.” In short, it is an experience that is difficult to locate and identify. Hence, there is a need to make explicit, identify and address the gendered problems of an entrepreneurial ecosystem. A way forward is to consider the following four sets of conditions for a more inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem: density, fluidity, connectivity, and diversity of opportunity. In all four domains, women’s entrepreneurial activity is underrepresented. - In terms of density, the relative share of women in and entering into entrepreneurship is lower than for men. - In terms of fluidity, women are leaving employment in STEM-based industries, due to a hostile environment, gender bias and glass wall/ceiling effects, reducing their potential entrepreneurial contribution. - In terms of connectivity, where networks do exist, they are not gender inclusive and women do not participate. - Finally, in terms of diversity of opportunity, women are significantly under-represented in what is still a highly masculinized domain. Women are included in the yearly “"Missing Entrepreneurs” reports published by the European Commission and the OECD since 2014. These reports examine how targeted public policies can help to overcome obstacles to start-ups and self-employment and assume that the underrepresentation is due to factors such as institutional barriers, discrimination related difficulties to access resources, skill gaps etc. As shown in the present data, women obviously do manage to navigate in masculine technology environments, and they do express strength and self-confidence, and use all kinds of strategies in their everyday incubator interactions and in the process of raising capital. There seems to be a need for a different set of questions: Rather than asking, ‘why so few women’, we might as well ask, ‘how come tech entrepreneurship is so attractive to men?’ This would suggest a move from a ‘fix the women’ approach, to addressing how the system are benefitting (some forms of) men and masculinities. By critically engaging with the masculine norms prevailing in tech entrepreneurship we can reframe taken for granted and stereotypical assumption about tech entrepreneurship.

The project has provided a more gender aware understanding of how entrepreneurship ecosystems promote or prevent women technology entrepreneurs to develop successful technology ventures, available for those working within the field of incubation or financing as advisors and policy makers, as well as for the actors within the ecosystem. As a direct output from the project, we have developed a three-part toolbox: 1) guidebook, 2) insights report and 3) workshop under the heading Levelling the field: A three-part toolbox. The toolbox includes: 1. Levelling the field: A Guide to an Inclusive Entrepreneurial Ecosystem provides a basic understanding of how to promote inclusive entrepreneurship from an ecosystem perspective. 2. The Gendered Nature of Tech Entrepreneurship: Insights for Understanding the Gender-divide in Tech Entrepreneurship is about “the what and whys” related to gender and entrepreneurship, with a particular focus on technical entrepreneurship. 3. My Better Entrepreneurial Ecosystem: A Workshop on How to Promote an Inclusive Entrepreneurship Ecosystem provides a format to enhance knowledge, ability and collaboration in an ecosystem focusing on norm-reflexive ability for change among actors in the ecosystem. These three tools are meant as complementary components to inspire change. With the guidebook providing a basic understanding of how to promote inclusive entrepreneurship, the report provides deeper insights into different aspects of gender and inclusion, and the workshop provides a format and methods to enhance knowledge, ability, and collaboration in the ecosystem. The toolbox is available for use for those working to support entrepreneurs in a gender aware manner and to make entrepreneurial ecosystems more inclusive.

Underlying most regional entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem frameworks is the assumption that all entrepreneurs have equal access to resources, participation and support, as well as an equal chance of a successful outcome (venture start-up). However, women are underrepresented in successful entrepreneurial ecosystems and a persistent gender bias continues to exist in entrepreneurship discourse and practice. The UN SDG on Gender states that women suffer from “disadvantages in education [which] translate into lack of access to skills and limited opportunities in the labour market”. We aim to address this, by providing a nuanced understanding of how gender is a decisive factor, i.e. how women and men are influenced by and, in turn, influence entrepreneurial ecosystems differently. In order to achieve this, we will focus on a specific facet of gender in entrepreneurship: namely women’s technology entrepreneurship and how this relates to accepted femininity and masculinity norms in different contexts. We will focus on the cultural embeddedness and interactions of gender, technology, entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystems. Our comparison between Ireland, Sweden, Norway, and Israel will help to explain variations and similarities with regard to gender in technology entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem frameworks. The findings generated will inform policy development aimed at inclusivity and sustainability, thus benefiting both women and men. In so doing, we align with topics 2.1 and 2.2 of the GENDER-NET Plus ERA-NET Cofund call under SDG 9.