Investigating the Gendering of STEM University Entrepreneurial Ecosystems

Övrigt konferensbidrag, 2023

Questions We Care About

Contextualisation is considered key to understanding how, when and why entrepreneurship occurs, as it highlights a spectrum of factors, including situational conditions and the influence of stakeholder groups. However, context is often treated as a mere backdrop of place/space, rather than an integral fabric influencing all aspects of a phenomenon. In this conceptual paper, we focus on the complex context of university Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) Entrepreneurial Ecosystems. Despite different initiatives, and theoretical explanations, practice has not always produced what has been desired or expected of these ecosystems. We are curious to unpack potential layers of norms and traditions, practice and policy, by taking a feminist informed engaged scholarship approach, in order to identify why this may be, and develop relevant research questions to co-investigate this context with practitioners.

We do not assume that the lack of promise is a deficiency of practitioners, but rather as linked to the complexity of the context, including the potential for layered bias (explicit or implicit), and often unacknowledged tensions involved in emphasizing equality, diversity and inclusiveness. We subsequently call for close collaboration with practitioners, embedded in day-to-day practice, and an alternative (complementary) approach in the development and investigation of new (research) questions that support both theoretical and practical advances. In doing so our conceptual and methodological focus is on the micro level, to understand the experiences and challenges of individual and/or actor groups in practice.  The question we care about is: How could feminist informed engaged scholarship support us to ask co-created questions and develop solutions, which challenge the gendering of university STEM ecosystems and support inclusion, through collaboration with practitioners?

Approach

In taking a gender perspective on theory and practice within STEM university EEs, we enter an undertheorized field. We base our thinking on Van de Ven’s engaged scholarship approach, which has been extended to include explicitly feminist aims. In focusing on feminist informed engaged scholarship we subsequently respond to calls to recognise the context-dependent nature of entrepreneurship research and theory development and to consider gendered social positionality within entrepreneurial contexts.

Implications

We suggest that feminist informed engaged scholarship could guide new research agendas for processes and practices with STEM university EE. This approach has the potential to challenge traditional understandings by foregrounding the gendering of the STEM university EE context. We emphasize approaches that collaborate and co-create with practitioners, and explore the inherent challenges, tensions and trade-offs experienced in these contexts.

Value/Originality

Understanding the day-to-day dilemmas and tensions between policy and practice, principles and pragmatism helps us understand how, and why, achieving gender equality in STEM university EEs continues to be a challenge. Exploring such contexts from the perspective of those involved (including the tensions that a focus on gender equality can bring), helps researchers to ask more relevant (and potentially new/different) questions.  It also guides us to ask questions and do research which might be better appreciated, applied, and accessed by practitioners and policy makers.