Review of Policy and Practice Implications in Gender and Entrepreneurship Research

Foss, Lene and Henry, Colette and Ahl, Helene (2014) Review of Policy and Practice Implications in Gender and Entrepreneurship Research. In: 2014 Diana International Research Conference, 2014-06-152014-06-18.

Abstract

Scholars across all discipline areas are increasingly being asked to demonstrate the impact of their research (Mohrman et al., 2001; Steyaert, 2011). In so doing, entrepreneurship researchers have become aware of the considerable disparity between the knowledge generated by academic scholars and that which can be usefully employed by entrepreneurs and managers in practice (Steffens et al., 2013). With specific regard to women’s entrepreneurship, while scholars have proved that gender does matter (Brush et al., 2010, Kelley et al., 2012), and that entrepreneurship in itself is a gendered phenomenon (Jennings & Brush, 2013), the extent to which gender scholars have been concerned with the actual impact of their research has not been evidenced to the same extent. However, assessing impact can be a highly complex issue, involving both subjective and objective assessments, often on a longitudinal basis (Storey, 2000; Henry et al., 2005). Thus, by way of proxy, we consider the manner in which scholars articulate the intended impact of their research to be an important first step toward a robust assessment of impact over time. With this in mind, this paper seeks to critically explore the articulated policy and practice implications of women’s entrepreneurship research. Our key objective is to consider whether there has been a notable shift in focus with regard to such implications since the first studies on female entrepreneurship appeared, and if so, to consider whether there is a link between such a shift and the different theoretical perspectives[1] adopted.     We draw on a comprehensive data set compiled from the gender and entrepreneurship literatures over a 30-year period. Consistent with Denyer & Neely (2004), we conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) of relevant empirical papers published in top tier journals. For the purposes of this paper, consistent with Katz (2003) and Brush (2007), we focused on articles published in the ‘Big Five’ entrepreneurship journals (i.e. ERD, ETP, JBV, JSBM, SBE) between 1983 and 2012. We compare the different levels of focus on policy and practice implications between the three decades included in our review, and highlight notable variances. The paper builds on and contributes to extant literatures by furthering our understanding of policy and practice implications in gender and entrepreneurship research.   The paper is organised as follows. In the first section we discuss the issue of policy and practice implications, how this has attracted increased attention in the social sciences and the particular tradition within the field of entrepreneurship. The second section focuses on the development of gender perspectives in entrepreneurship research, outlining the particular questions that have guided our empirical study. The third section details the methodology, and this is followed by the presentation of our findings, which are subsequently discussed. Finally, some concluding remarks are provided, with an indication of avenues worthy of future research. [1] For example, gender as a variable (GAV), feminist standpoint theory (FST) and post-structural feminism (PSF).