Gender studies have made an influential contribution in the last 30 years as important areas of study across all disciplines. During that time, there have been developments in the way gender is theorised (Acker, 1992, 1995; Wharton, 2005; Gatrell & Swan, 2008; Gatrell, 2008, 2011).
Gender has been theorised in terms of traits and behaviours that are specifically associated with women or men, as a form of social construction and, more recently, as performance – produced through everyday practices and discourse (Richardson & Robinson, 2008). Despite several advances in gender theorisation, the gender system represented in media and textbooks is divided into two logics – dichotomy and hierarchy – that man is the norm (Swan, 2008, p. 18).
The male norm governs the view of what characterises an entrepreneur, and how an entrepreneur works and functions in the media.
Mythical pictures of what is typically female and male have always influenced and continue to influence us (Wharton, 2005; Gatrell, 2011; Casson, 1982). These social constructions have an impact on everyday life and therefore who we perceive an entrepreneur to be, “We all of us know someone who is an entrepreneur. He may be a property developer, a small businessman, or just someone who knows how to ‘make a fast buck’.” (Casson, 1982, p. 1) Here the entrepreneur is irrefutably cast as male.
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The gendered representation of entrepreneurship can be linked to power. Power can be seen as dominance, representing supremacy and subordination respectively. Power also creates our social world and affects what the world looks like, and what can and cannot be said (Foucault, 2002). Power is thus both delimiting and productive, since ‘some’ representations of entrepreneurship are left out or subordinated (Jørgensen & Phillips, 2000). Representations of power are certainly evident in media and textbook production, as will be seen in the next section.
Studies have shown how the media or the press could be simultaneously cultural as well as hegemonic (Langowitz & Morgan, 2003). In portraying women as involved in mainly lower- value companies, the business press reinforces the attitude that women entrepreneurs “aren’t really serious” (Langowitz & Morgan, 2003, p. 114). Female entrepreneurship is constructed as a divergence from the male norm of entrepreneurship. The discourse on entrepreneurship reinforces patriarchy, producing and reproducing entrepreneurial ideas that give dominance to traditional male values. These representations are inscribed in business textbooks prescribed at schools, thus reinforcing them in a profound way.
In the media in the USA between 1989 and 2000, similar results were echoed. In examining shifts in the metaphoric portrayal of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship, Nicholson and Anderson (2005, p. 163) concluded, “the entrepreneurial myth remains resolutely male. In particular, a strong emphasis was placed on businesswomen’s link to the domestic sphere.
Female entrepreneurs were positioned at the interface between the public and private sphere.
Their business achievements were framed in terms of the balance between their multiple roles as employees, primary caregivers of children and engagement in domestic work, and the pressure they faced because of this. However, the content never questioned why the pressures of caring for children and doing housework remained the sole responsibility of women. Instead, it simply validated that such roles were traditionally expected of women. This dominant ideology denies the economic contribution of women and obscures women’s economic activities.
Textbooks also propagate certain ideologies about entrepreneurship. An examination of Japanese business textbooks from both macro- (social practices) and micro- (linguistic discourses) level perspectives showed similar bias to the media articles (Thomson & Otsuji, 2003). The findings revealed that textbooks presented a stereotypical and exaggerated version of social practices of the Japanese business community, based on idealised native Japanese
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norms. Female characters had less access to managerial positions and fewer opportunities to participate in business than they do in reality. Non-Japanese female characters were invisible in the textbooks.
A review of representation of gender in Introductory Accounting textbooks revealed similar findings (Tietz, 2007), with stereotypes of women and men being reinforced. The picture of the ‘typical’ successful businessperson that emerged is that of a man who is confident, cautious, and educated. Women were portrayed as emotional and as emphasising their physical appearance. According to this thinking, women are predominantly interested in and responsible for the private sphere, while men are neither. Finally, the message is that men’s contributions to business and society have been valued more than women’s are. Although the study used content analysis of the pictures, stories and homework material to justify concerns about gender stereotyping, analysis of the language would also give publishers and authors an opportunity to focus on how to depict gender differently and present balanced and unbiased reporting.
While textbooks and policies provide an air of impartiality, the use of CDA can unearth the hidden bias and subtexts. Davids (2012) conducted an exploration of the ideologies implicit in Economic and Management Sciences (EMS) textbooks using the methodological framework of CDA. The study revealed that entrepreneurship is gendered; the discourse (visual included) offered a taken for granted assumption that successful entrepreneurs are men. Men were represented as more capable of running successful businesses than women, and were frequently represented as having adaptable skills and potential to work outside their fields of speciality.
Males were also represented as having the ability to create the conditions for women to be successful. They were constructed as strong, powerful, competent, innovative and capable figures, suitable for positions of authority. The study concluded that EMS was uniquely designed to serve a particular agenda. These findings are similar to those of a Jordanian study (Hamdan, 2010) and a study of the German media by Achtenhagen and Welter (2011). All of these studies point to the fact that gendered characterisations of entrepreneurship and subordination are institutionalised, stereotypical and normalised within prevailing discourses.
Similar to Davids (2013), the present study of SADC Business Studies textbooks using the framework of CDA will make transparent the hidden ideology used to facilitate a particular socio-political agenda regarding gender representation.
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Portrayal of female entrepreneurs in Japanese business texts over a 25-year period, from 1990 to 2014, showed that despite increased variety in representations of female entrepreneurs, traditionally gendered discourses prevail (Bobrowska & Conrad, 2015). These position women as inferior in the entrepreneurship discourse specifically, and in the social order at large (Bobrowska & Conrad, 2015). The findings resonated with those of other research in Western contexts, and confirmed the male-gendered nature of entrepreneurship in Japan. The uncovered discourses appeared to hinge on evaluative assumptions about the social world and women’s position within it, reflecting and reifying Japan’s male-dominated capitalist ideology. The authors asserted that such portrayals shape societal attitudes, which are assumed to affect entrepreneurship levels; therefore, lack of progress in the media discourse is likely to affect female entrepreneurship levels negatively (Bobrowska & Conrad, 2015).
Study of the discourse of entrepreneurial masculinities (and femininities) reiterated that the dominant discourse of entrepreneurship in media is masculine (Eleanor, 2013). Entrepreneurs are represented in textbooks and media by a range of male stereotypes, whilst women are under- represented. When shown, women are linked to domestic concerns. Moreover, academic studies persistently rely on male experience to theorise entrepreneurship, while women are studied in terms of their difference. This enduring discourse results in feminine entrepreneurs being rendered invisible.
The research called for entrepreneurship researchers to engage with contemporary debates in gender, culture and media studies, and proposes a research agenda to challenge dominant discourses (Eleanor, 2013). This is pertinent to my study, as failing to present a range of explanations narrows the alternatives presented to students, leading to the economic experiences of minorities being marginalised. Authors should present all aspects of important issues, and it should be up to students to decide which positions they find most persuasive.
Despite many studies in the field of gender and entrepreneurship, limitations still exist. To date gender studies in entrepreneurship research have largely focused on the experience of women entrepreneurs (Baker, Aldrich & Liou, 2009). To address the invisibility of women in entrepreneurship research, studies have been trying to understand the ‘differences’ and potentially unique contribution of women entrepreneurs. This focus on women and entrepreneurship as a subset of entrepreneurship research is, however, too reductionist. This approach to gender studies “argues for understanding the unique experiences of women, and their so-called natural or socialized, feminine styles in the workplace” (Swan, 2006, p. 9). She
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proposes adopting more discursive and poststructuralist approaches, where masculinities and femininities could be defined as ‘ways of being’ made available through discourses (Swan, 2006).
The literature about discourse and gender has focused on illustrating men’s domination of women in organisations, media, education and so on, but increasingly research needs to be devoted to understanding “the range of constructions/performances” of gender (Wagner &
Wodak, 2006, p. 388). This view is supported in Pillay’s (2013) thesis ‘Gender representation of two South African Business Studies textbooks’, at the end of which she proposes an epistemological shift “to study how gender is accomplished rather than study what it is”. Ahl (2004, p. 192) asserts:
A poststructuralist stance has been critical to developing feminist debate which challenges the notion of female essentialism and assumptions of shared subordination arising from a homogeneous biological identity and socio-economic positioning. As such, the notion of gender as constructed through discourse is framed as a fluid, contextualised diverse performance.
The feminist critique offers an alternative perspective that challenges the normative institutional underpinnings, which constrain the possibilities of who can be recognised as an entrepreneurial actor and what constitutes entrepreneurial behaviour (Calás, 2009). As previous research lacks an explicit feminist perspective, these studies often neglect robust structural, historical and cultural features as well as a power perspective (Ahl, 2006). This study addresses the limitations of the scientific studies conducted to understand gender and entrepreneurship both in textbooks and the media. This study therefore seeks to reveal the gender subtext underpinning the discourse of gender and entrepreneurship as they are portrayed in textbooks, and open up a space to question it.
While gender and entrepreneurship is the central focus of this discourse analysis, studies on gender, disability, sexuality and race have proved useful for this study, as they highlight discourse issues common to all representations of that denoted ‘other’.
As a poststructuralist researcher, exploring the intersectionality of disability, race, class, gender and sexuality reveals the need to shift away from the dichotomous imagery of the oppressed and the oppressor. The reality is much more complex (Collins, 2004). An intersectional approach is needed that recognises that there are important differences among women and men rather than simply between them. Feminist scholars argue that gender, disability race, class and
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sexuality are interconnected as “intersecting oppressions” (Crenshaw, 1989). They reveal how intersecting forms of discrimination and oppression create opportunities and social and material benefits for those “who enjoy normative or non-marginalized statuses such as Whiteness, maleness, heterosexuality, or upper class status” (Steinbugler, Press & Dias, 2006).
Researchers who use intersectionality are able to present a sophisticated, nuanced understanding of the workings of power relations. As Razack (1998, p. 12) argues, “it is important to explore in a historical and site-specific way the meaning of race, economic status, class, disability, sexuality, and gender as they come together to structure women and men in different and shifting positions of power and privilege”. Because intersectionality recognises relational constructs of social inequality, it is an effective tool for examining how power and power relations are maintained and reproduced across the four SADC textbooks in my study.