Gendering, Biology, and Stereotypes in Entrepreneurship Training

Abstract

This conceptual paper interrogates the gendered assumptions underpinning perceptions of women’s capacity for economic agency. It challenges biologically determinist and historically entrenched narratives that continue to shape entrepreneurship discourse. It unravels the persistent stereotypes, rooted in outdated constructions of women's domestic seclusion, workforce needs, and gendered labour divisions, that have relegated women to the margins of entrepreneurship and innovation. It critiques how postfeminist and neoliberal feminist narratives obscure the socio-historical processes through which these assumptions have been normalised. Through its critical reconceptualisation of gender, biology, and economic agency, it highlights how normative legacies continue to shape attitudes to gender and entrepreneurship and innovation. It argues for the integration of structural and historical analysis into entrepreneurship education to unsettle essentialist logics and equip students with the conceptual tools to examine how entrepreneurial subjectivities are institutionally and discursively constituted. It proposes a shift toward reflexive pedagogical approaches that encourage students to critically reflect on how assumptions, stereotypes, and practices are embedded in understandings of economic agency and gender. Its theoretical contribution is its advance of the imperative of analytical engagement with the socio-historical formation of institutional frameworks and their normative legacies to unpack gendered assumptions that continue to undermine women's entrepreneurial and innovation capacities.