Advancing Gendered Analyses of Entrepreneurship: A Critical Exploration of Entrepreneurial Activity among Gay Men and Lesbian Women

Abstract

This paper advances contemporary gendered analyses of entrepreneurial activity by exploring self-employment amongst gay men and lesbian women. Within current entrepreneurial debate, heterosexual women have become the visible embodiment of the gendered subject. Our contribution is to queer this assumption when focusing upon the entrepreneurial activity of gays and lesbians. Our core question investigates if 'there is evidence of differences between homosexuals and heterosexuals in their likelihood of being entrepreneurially active'. To address this question, we contrast competing notions of gender stereotypes and discrimination whilst drawing on findings from a large-scale population-based study of 163,000 UK adults. We find few differences between homosexuals and heterosexuals; this persists after examining intersectional patterns and considering if gay and lesbian entrepreneurs choose particular sectors, geographies or forms of self-employment. As our discussion highlights, the value of this study lies within its critique of contemporary analyses of gender which assume it is an end-point rather than a foundation for analysing gender as a multiplicity.

Gender Characterizations in Entrepreneurship: A Multi-Level Investigation of Sex-Role Stereotypes about High-Growth, Commercial, and Social Entrepreneurs

“…These results are notable because they reveal that the normative representation of (a) high‐growth entrepreneurship, like entrepreneurship in general, is masculine and (b) low‐growth entrepreneurship, un like entrepreneurship in general, is feminine. Because stereotypes inform assumptions and expectations of “who and what” is an entrepreneur (Marlow, Greene, and Coad , p. 121), stereotypical beliefs can lead women to be quickly associated with less successful or stagnant ventures and men to be readily delinked from them. Conversely, growth‐oriented ventures may be automatically associated with men and delinked from women.…”

Heteronormativity and the (re)construction of gay male entrepreneurial identities

“…Heteronormativity is an entrenched feature of entrepreneurship studies which if left unchallenged will continue to marginalise LGBT+ entrepreneurship research. For those entrepreneurship studies scholars who wish to study LGBT+ entrepreneurship, queer theory is distinctive in how it forces thinking not only about heteronormativity in entrepreneurship and organisational contexts (Marlow et al, 2018;Rumens, 2018;Ozturk and Rumens, 2014), but also about what is taken-for-granted and normative (Parker, 2002;Warner, 1993Warner, , 1999.…”

“…Research agendas that explore how LGBT+ entrepreneurship is shaped by class, age and (dis)ability are also desirable. Notably, the domain of LGBT+ entrepreneurship remains empirically open (Galloway, 2011;Marlow et al, 2018;Wood et al, 2012), and it is our hope that more entrepreneurship scholars will venture into this field of research. We merged our initial codes 'bravado' and 'pretension' into 'self-aggrandizement' at a later stage of analysis, because we eventually agreed that the two initial codes picked up different aspects of 'self-aggrandizement'.…”

Unexpected Lives: The Intersection of Islam and Arab Women’s Entrepreneurship

“…As we conduct this exploratory study, we realise that Islam is but one of many intersecting structural features of Lebanese society. Furthermore, we do not use women as a generic proxy for gender (Henry et al 2015) or as the embodiment of the gendered subject (Marlow et al 2018). On the contrary, we challenge the notion that women are synonymous with gender, and only women have a gender (Kelan 2009).…”