This course highlights entrepreneurship from a gender perspective. A central set of structures affecting entrepreneurship for both women and men are gender structures. It is more usual that women start companies in the service sector while men start companies in industrial manufacturing and high-tech industries and societal sectors are gender segregated. In current research, women’s entrepreneurship is ‘invisible’ - masculine norms dominate entrepreneurship research and practice, and everything that deviates from these norms is usually seen as strange or uninteresting. Since 30% of all new ventures are started and owned by women there is a need for theoretical and practical approaches that analyse women’s entrepreneurship visibility and successfulness.
In this course we study entrepreneurship at different levels, the entrepreneur, the enterprise and the environment. These levels are focused from two areas which are linked to each other. The first one is “entrepreneurship as a way of life for women” where the gender perspective is used to understand how women experience their entrepreneurship and handle gender structures. The second area is “the neglected part of entrepreneurship” where the invisibility of women’s entrepreneurship is studied, for instance women’s position and role in family business.
Structure There will be 2 weekly sessions lasting 2 hours each for 7 weeks. The written examination will take place in an additional week.
Teaching methods
A blend of teaching methods including lectures, guest lectures, case analysis and presentations, project work and group discussions will be used for the course. Prerequisites Students must have a minimum of 80 university credits.