Provoking entrepreneurial thinking : gendered embodiment and entrepreneurship education

Abstract

<div lang="en" class="abs"><p class="abs_header">Abstract</p><p>Entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education (EE) have significant roles in terms of societal discourses. Entrepreneurship has been seen as a promoter of growth and societal material progress. Also in Finland, entrepreneurship has been seen as a driving force of growth. However, there are some critical voices emerging as well. The idea of this paper is to understand the standing point of critical feminist theories in EE, by conducting a literature review. More specifically aim is to understand better the meaning of the body in today’s entrepreneurship education (EE). I make some reflections from a study unit on Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Tourism, where a debate was held consisting of provoking themes about the startup scene in Finnish Lapland.</p><p>Based on the study, it is possible to draw following conclusions: 1) Because the entrepreneur is in fact disembodied, the heroic entrepreneur is seen most often seen as a male. The identity cannot be without the body, which makes gender an essential part of entrepreneurial identity as well, whether we speak about it or not. 2) The body is the corporeal manifestation of class, which also includes other classifications besides gender, and the study proposes that it would be useful to study multiple inequalities in terms of EE.</p></div>