usasbe 2016_presentation slides

What’s in a name?Semantics, self-perception & why women

don’t call themselves “entrepreneurs”

Mandy Wheadonmwheadon@purdue.edu

Natalie Duval-Couetilnatduval@purdue.edu

The Problem

Background» Discourse analysis of the first season of the

entrepreneurship-themed reality television show Shark Tank (Wheadon & Duval-Couetil, 2015)

» Logan (2012) study exploring self-employment and entrepreneurship among 1000 women in the UK

» Dohrman (2010) research on millennial entrepreneurs

So what?Does it REALLY matter whether women call

themselves “entrepreneurs” or not?

Less likely to believe that they are capable of becoming successful entrepreneurs

Overwhelmingly found in less-profitable industries

More difficult for women to secure venture funding & have limited access to valuable mentorship and support networks

““At any historical moment, both the gender order and

linguistic conventions exercise a profound constraint on our thoughts and actions, predisposing us to follow patterns set

down over generations.

 -Eckert & McConnell-Ginet (2013), Language and Gender, p.44

Connections

• Language

• Thought

• Associations

• Perceptions

• Beliefs

• Actions

Words convey information, but they also generate meaning

Meet expectations/implicit

associations

Symbolic &cultural capital

Legitimacy

Consequences

Legitimacy & Symbolic Capital = Greater Access to Resources

““Change comes with the interruption of such patterns, and while sometimes that interruption may be sudden, it

comes more commonly through infinitesimally small events that may or may not be intentional.”

 -Eckert & McConnell-Ginet (2013), Language and Gender, p.44

Methods» Mixed-methods sociolinguistics

framework

» Unified Identity Theory

» Textual analysis and corpus linguistics analysis

Research Questions

1. If females are not being called “entrepreneurs,” what terms are being used to identify them?

» Labels assigned by others

» Labels adopted by self

Research Questions2. What concepts or characteristics associated

with entrepreneurship might be discouraging the identification or perception of women as “entrepreneurs”?

» Specifically, how are these associations being produced/reproduced linguistically?

Alternate terms adopted by SELF

» Textual analysis of first season of Shark Tank

» Analyzed terms by frequency of occurrence—results visually represented in word cloud format

R1

Alternate terms assigned by OTHERS

» Corpus linguistics frequency analysis of 39 databases

» Compared frequency and sources of gendered alternative terms for “entrepreneur.”

Alternate terms adopted by SELF

R 1 Results

Alternate terms assigned by OTHERS

R1 Results

GENDER search terms:

womanpreneur(s) womenpreneur(s) femalepreneur(s)

girlpreneur(s)manpreneur(s) menpreneur(s) malepreneur(s) boypreneur(s)

Female al-ternatives

(1758)

Male alter-natives (47)

RELATIONAL search terms:

mompreneurs(s) mommypreneurs(s) motherpreneur(s) mumpreneur(s)

mummypreneur(s) mamapreneur(s)

dadpreneur(s) daddypreneur(s) fatherpreneur(s) papapreneur(s)

R2 ResultsComparison of corpus linguistics frequency analysis results in COCA for gendered collocations, represented as a Mutual Information (MI) score

 “Entrepreneur(s)”

(n=7061)Total

%MI

Female/Woman/Women 149 2.11 1.52

Male/Man/Men 18 0.25 -1.49

THANKS!

Any questions?You can find us at

mwheadon@purdue.edunatduval@purdue.edu