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IJGE 2,1

Social constructionism and personal constructivism

Getting the business owners view on the role of sex and gender
Fiona Wilson
Department of Management, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK, and

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Stephen Tagg
Department of Marketing, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
Abstract
Purpose While the entrepreneurship and small business research literature has tended to portray women as lesser than men in identifying the differences between them, little research has looked at how gender is construed in business ownership. The purpose of this paper is to provide a new focus, examining how male and female business owners construe each other. Design/methodology/approach The research employs George Kellys personal construct theory and repertory grids to examine the constructs associated with male and female business owners. Findings It is found that there are many constructs used to describe business owners and, counter to predictions from some of the literature review, few differences between the way in which male and female business owners are construed. The paper offers explanations as to why so few differences are found. Research limitations/implications The sample is limited to just one area of Britain and the businesses had all been established in the last three years. This will inuence the generalizability of the ndings. Originality/value This paper is able to offer research evidence to demonstrate that male and female business owners do not construe male and female business owners differently. Keywords Gender, Small enterprises, Entrepreneurialism, United Kingdom Paper type Research paper

International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship Vol. 2 No. 1, 2010 pp. 68-82 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 1756-6266 DOI 10.1108/17566261011026556

Introduction It appears to be widely recognized that expanding the involvement of women in entrepreneurship and business ownership is critical for long-term economic growth (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, 2006, 2007; Langowitz and Minniti, 2007; Brush et al., 2006), yet women-owned businesses and female entrepreneurs remain in a minority (Marlow et al., 2008). A contributing factor may be that in the literature entrepreneurship and business ownership are construed as predominately male. The entrepreneurship research literature has historically assumed that entrepreneurs are male (Stevenson, 1996; Beggs et al., 1994) and has tended to identify them in terms of masculine characteristics. The entrepreneur or small business owner has been referred
The grids were collected by four researchers Sara Carter, Eleanor Shaw, Fiona Wilson and Wing Lam. The research team is grateful for the nancial support for this project from the Economic and Social Research Council, UK (Award Reference No. RES-000-23-0247).

to as he (Collins and Moore, 1964; Schumpeter, 1934; Deeks, 1973). The entrepreneur, in particular, has been portrayed as essentially masculine with super-normal qualities, reecting the archetype of white middle class male hero (Beggs et al., 1994; Ogbor, 2000). Some have noted that the term entrepreneurship specically connotes certain behaviours such as innovation, risk taking and an emphasis on growth (Carland et al., 1984; Curran, 1991; Green and Cohen, 1995; Schumpeter, 1934), behaviours that may be associated more readily with male rather than female entrepreneurship. The symbolic order of gender assigns the sphere of activity and proactivity to the male while it associates passivity, adaptation and exibility with the female. The male-oriented denition of reality is upheld as the legitimate worldview celebrating masculine concepts of control, competition, rationality and dominance (Ogbor, 2000). Female entrepreneurs nd they are judged and evaluated against a norm established by a self-evident majority group standard (Lewis, 2006). In this comparison, female entrepreneurs are construed as lacking or lesser. For example, a Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report says that women:
[. . .] are less likely to know an entrepreneur, less likely to be thinking of starting a business, less likely to think they have the skills to start a business, less likely to see business opportunities and more likely to fear failure than their male counterparts (Harding, 2007, p. 37).

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A recent headline proclaims, Women-owned entrepreneurial startups underperform men-owned rms (Kauffman Foundation, 2009). The media adds to this view of women entrepreneurs as lesser when it reinforces the attitude that women entrepreneurs arent really serious (Langowitz and Morgan, 2003, p. 14) and paints a restricted picture of them (Achtenhaagen and Welter, 2003). Social constructionism invites us to be critical of conventional knowledge, particularly the idea of unproblematic observations of the world, cautions us to be ever suspicious of our assumptions about how the world appears (Burr, 1995). It is not difcult to challenge how the attributes or identity of entrepreneurs and business owners have been construed. Qualitative research shows that business owners do not see themselves as heroes (Down, 2006) and may be reluctant to call themselves entrepreneurs (Jones, 2009). Female business owners themselves refute the archetype of the white male heroic entrepreneur (Essers and Benschop, 2007). Research on leadership (Eagly and Johannesen-Schmidt, 2001) indicates that there are few signicant differences in the leadership behaviours of men and women especially in organizational settings. Cliff et al. (2005) too challenge the assumption that male and female business leaders establish gender-stereotypic organizational characteristics in their rms. Explaining and challenging these stereotypes of the attributes of the entrepreneur, Bruni et al. (2005) argue that the features of entrepreneurship reside in the symbolic domain of the male (initiative-taking, accomplishment and relative risk) and when those same features are transposed to the symbolic domain of the female, they become uncertain. It is then necessary to justify female enterprise or business ownership because it is not an immediately shared and self-evident social value. Women business owners and entrepreneurs are marked out by simply having the word female placed in front of the term (Lewis, 2006). As a result, some authors such as Baker et al. (1997), Reed (1996) and Mirchandani (1999, 2005) have argued that female business owners and entrepreneurs have been made invisible in the literature. Further, their contribution to the small business sector either as rm owners in their own right or as providers of labour to family owned rms has been largely unrecognised (Carter and Bennett, 2006; Hamilton, 2006).

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There is research which refutes this view of female entrepreneurs being lesser or different (Birley, 1989). A study of Polish women entrepreneurs illustrated that these women identied with a pattern of characteristics typically found to be masculine (Zapalska, 1997). Although the women rated themselves as more emotional than men, there were no signicant differences in the personality attributes that characterised male and female entrepreneurs. For Zapalskas (1997) research, interviewees were asked to identify their own managerial characteristics from a list provided by the researcher. Similarly, a survey by The Small Enterprise Research Team (2005) in the UK found that female respondents disagreed quite strongly with the notion that men and women have different attributes/psychological traits. However, the women also argued for perceived female superiority seeing women as better multi-taskers and more conciliatory managers. A US study of female managers and entrepreneurs using the 16 Personality Factor Prole (Cattell et al., 1969) and the Bem Sex Role Inventory (Bem, 1981) found that female entrepreneurs did not self-identify with the stereotypical feminine sex role. The study found that two-thirds of the sample held culturally masculine attitudes (Brodsky, 1993). One-third of the entrepreneurs adopted an androgynous self-perception. Their personalities tended to be less warm, very dominant, expedient, bold, suspicious, shrewd, self-assured, somewhat conservative and self-sufcient. They presented as bright, determined, verbally skilled, analytic and strong, in need of control and intolerant of limits imposed by others, seeking to dene their own work environments and parameters. Studies of women business owners often include the criteria for success. The most successful women business owners in the USA and Britain have been awarded the title Business Amazons. Hertz (1986) studied Business Amazons and found that three criteria were used to assess eligibility: ownership and management of at least 50 per cent of the equity of a business, employment of at least 25 persons, and a sales volume of at least 750,000 in Britain, and $5 million in the USA. Critique of the research on constructions of gender and entrepreneurship Size, growth and prot from business are the assumed standards, rarely questioned, against which all businesses are measured. The very few rms that grow quickly happen to be mostly male owned. Despite the fact that most existing small rms, both male and female owned, do not grow to any considerable extent, research texts tend to construct lack of growth as a female problem. The assumed performance norm is imposed on women, rendering them inadequate (Ahl, 2004; 2006). Moreover, a judgment is being made when it is stated that women undercapitalize their business. Evidence has suggested that women have greater limitations upon access to personal savings when compared to their male counterparts (Carter and Kolvereid, 1997) as women were more likely to have been working part time or in low-paid work, or come from lower income households than men. Their disadvantaged position will fundamentally inuence their experience of self-employment (Marlow and Patton, 2005). A judgment is also implicit in the symbolic constructs that are claimed to be associated with entrepreneurship. For example, Collinson and Hearn (1996) claim that the symbolic construct of entrepreneurship concerns the conquest of new markets and new territories so that masculinity is a competitive process which tends to exclude whoever is not man enough to be a predator (Bruni et al., 2005). Ahl (2004) reviews the words theorists have used to describe entrepreneurs and argues that words such as able,

intelligent, skilled at organizing, resolute and daring are words associated with masculinity. Ahl also nds a t between the words in Bems (1981) masculinity scale and the words describing entrepreneur. Would this the case if male and female business owners were asked about their constructs of each other? In most of the research literature, if the subject is not only female, but also the masculine as norm is taken for granted. The hierarchical nature of the gender binary renders the feminine subordinate and other to the male norm. The binary divide coupled with stereotypes that draw on differences between men and women are reied in research such as Bems that see masculinity and femininity as two separate constructs. Similarly, Broverman et al. (1972) can be accused of reinforcing the gender stereotype by asking male and female student to list all the characteristics, attributes and behaviour on which they thought men and women differed. Recently, Ahl (2004) taking the words from Bems masculinity scale and the words used to describe entrepreneur could be in danger of reifying the gender divide. Is this dualism a learnt state of being then found in all studies of constructs associated with entrepreneurship or is it caused by the research method employed that provides contrasting stereotypes of males and females? In the research by Buttner and Rosen (1988), 106 bank loan ofcers were asked to evaluate men, women or successful entrepreneurs on scales assessing nine attributes of successful entrepreneurs. Each loan ofcer received only one version and was unaware of the other versions. Men, compared to women were consistently seen as closer to successful entrepreneurs on characteristics such as leadership, autonomy and risk taking. However, the research provided the attributes and did not examine the constructs or attributes that would naturally arise as bank loan ofcers or business owners described business owners they personally knew. A study by Watson et al. (1995) examined the constructs used to describe successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs. In total, 63 small business owner-managers (16 women and 47 men) were rst asked to describe a successful entrepreneur and their work, paying attention to habits, beliefs, business operations, interpersonal relations, the marketplace and other factors. A second question asked them to describe an unsuccessful entrepreneur. Business owners were asked to describe their social constructions of successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs. If research examines constructs associated with success, differences will emerge in how success is construed. This becomes the focus instead of how men and women in business are construed. Rationale for this research What constructs would arise naturally if men and women business owners were asked to describe business owners without being asked about success? How would they construe other business owners they knew? Would there be an essentialist divide between men and women? No research, to our knowledge, has allowed the constructs individuals use to describe male and female business owners to naturally emerge, without prompting about managerial characteristics, stereotypical sex roles or attributes of successful or unsuccessful success business owners or entrepreneurs. Further, there has only been one study (Watson et al., 1995) on how business owners construe other business owners. In that study, the respondents were primed to discuss successful and unsuccessful business owners and the male and female samples were unmatched in terms of numbers of each sex, age of rm and sector. In this research, we do not prime and the male and female samples were matched.

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Social constructionism, personal constructivism and personal construct theory This research sought to use personal construct theory (Kelly, 1955) to explore the mental maps business owners construct to make sense of their understanding of how they saw other business owners. Just as social constructionism insists, we take a critical stance toward our taken for granted ways of understanding the world, and would not accept that knowledge comes from objective unbiased observations, personal construct theory would reject the notion of an objective reality. George Kellys personal constructivism can be regarded as a leading member of the constructivists family (Chiari, 2000). Kelly is a radical constructivist in that his theory of knowledge does not reect an objective reality but an ordering and organization of the world constituted by our experience. Knowledge is a construction of realities (Chiari and Nuzzo, 2003, p. 44) so the world can be interpreted in many equally legitimate ways. Personal construct psychology is based on understanding the individuals from within their own worldview. We all interact from a unique perspective. The basis of our mental map is formed by our collection of experiences and actions. The working tools of this map are constructs. Constructs are verbal labels. Kelly (1955, Vol. 1, p. 104) dened a personal construct as a way in which things are like and yet different from others. A construct is then a way of differentiating between objects, in this case business owners. Each construct can be thought of as a line connecting two points; these two points or poles each have a different label identifying the opposite extremes of the construct. Based on our perceptions of other people, we can place them somewhere on the scale between the two poles and hence build our mental map. Given the difculty in dening what entrepreneurship means, and the fact that it is usually associated with innovation and risk, factors that may not be associated with all business owners, we chose to ask about business owners, not entrepreneurs. However, we were interested to see if the characteristics associated with entrepreneurship might arise in discussions of business owners. Would business owners be construed in the same way as entrepreneurs, emphasizing super-normal qualities or placing emphasis on masculine constructs such as competitive, active, independent, decisive and self-condent? The sample The sample of 60 business owners consisted of equal numbers of males and females. For cost and convenience, they were all drawn from one geographical area of Britain. All the business owners in our sample were screened, through a telephone survey, to make sure we had a matched sample, matched on age of rm (they had established their businesses within the past three years) location and sector. All were from the business service sector as in that sector there would be a likelihood of accessing equal numbers of male and female business owners. Initial sample assembly concentrated on building the female sample of rms (advertising agencies, marketing and advertising consultants, public relations, etc.) as male businesses were more prevalent. Male businesses owners were then sought to match each of the female ones. The research method The repertory grid is a method for eliciting constructs (Fransella et al., 2003). For the purposes of this study, the repertory grid method provided a means of eliciting a business owners constructs of other male and female business owners. In this case,

business owners were asked to compare business owners they knew (the elements). The business owners became the elements. Each business owner interviewed was told that the researchers were interested in understanding how they viewed other business owners who they knew. (An example of a grid generated can be found in Table I.) They were rst asked to name, or give codenames or short descriptors to six business owners (three male and three female). These names, codenames or descriptors (elements of the grid) were presented across the top of a sheet, at the top of six columns with a note on the kind of business they ran, e.g. in Table I, the rst element is Consultant self. The constructs were then elicited from distinctions made among these elements. Each respondent was presented with three sets of elements (triads) that they had identied and for each set asked to specify some important way in which two of the elements are alike and thereby different from the third. This was repeated until the respondent could determine no further meaningful similarities and differences from the element triads presented to them. The basis of each set of similarities and differences became the bipolar constructs that were written, on either side of each row, down the sides of the page. Having constructed the grid, individuals were asked to rate each element on each construct using a scale of 1-7 (1 being on the left hand side of the grid and 7 being on the right). In Table I, (Grid F2) for example, each element (business owner) is being rated as to how pessimistic (1) or positive (7) they are. Let us look further at Table I to illustrate what the conceptual grid tells us. This woman construes the female business owners she knows as delegators, meek and open, good communicators who network. The male business owners are construed as self-reliant, arrogant, insular and poor communicators who are isolated. Table I also illustrates one of the more radical constructs that were used; one of her pair of constructs is cow and buttery; this is one way in which she construed how business owners were alike and different. The method then allows the researcher to probe for an explanation as to why this is how she construes business owners. As there were no others drawing on similar constructs, and this construct did not help distinguish between male and female business owners, we need not discuss it any further here.
Property Mind Consultant organiser consultant self (F) (F) (F) Pessimistic Secure Self-reliant Personal minded Meek Open Business skill Good communicator Cow Isolated 7 5 7 7 1 1 2 1 1 7 7 6 7 5 3 2 3 1 7 7 2 1 4 2 5 4 6 3 7 7 Garage equipment (M) 4 3 2 4 6 6 6 5 5 1 Chicken farmer Analyst (M) (M) 3 1 1 6 7 6 7 5 1 1 4 2 1 4 7 7 7 6 4 2 Positive and energetic Insecure Delegator Business minded Arrogant Insular Technical skilled Poor communicator Buttery Networker

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Table I. Repertory Grid F2

IJGE 2,1

A conceptual grid is then gradually made up and the elements rated on each construct. About 30 male business owners and 30 females completed grids. The grids were analyzed. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) assists with the quantitative analysis but a simple and more qualitative analysis can be done by simply looking at the list of types of business owners chosen (the elements) and the constructs generated from these. Grid analysis Each of the 60 grids was unique. Analysis of the grids required an analysis of the elements, of the constructs and the numerical scores of constructs awarded for each element. Analysis can be enabled with the use of statistical tests. Sex differences between the constructs and the business owners themselves were central to the analysis. The grids were entered into SPSS as separate les with labels for constructs and elements. Three sets of statistical tests investigated the presence or absence of sex differences within the grids. t-tests determined whether the average for the male elements differed from the average for the female elements for each separate construct. MANOVA was used on each grid using Wilks lambda to test whether any combination of constructs showed differences between male and female elements and nally categorical principal components analysis (CatPCA) was used to generate a two dimensional representation of the grid. To ensure systematic interpretation of the element plots that were generated, t-tests were conducted on the two dimensions and a MANOVA. Wilks lambda used to explore where a combination of the two dimensions might generate an overall signicant sex difference. Findings Our rst nding from grid analysis was that there was very large heterogeneity in the constructs generated; 384 different constructs were generated by the 60 business owners. The large variety of kinds of business ownership known to the business owners led to a wide variety of constructs being generated; the very wide heterogeneity to be found in the elements led to the wide heterogeneity of constructs. We saw in the example above, from Table I, how nuanced these constructs could be. We also found that although the constructs are bipolar, this does not mean they will necessarily be direct opposites of each other. For example, in Table I this business owner has meek versus arrogant in her list of constructs. We have then constructs being used in individualized ways. Given this individuality in thinking about business owners, it is not surprising that there are very few commonly used constructs. Of the 384 constructs, only 25 of the same or similar wording were used more than once. The most commonly used construct was risk taker or risk taking which was a construct found in only ve of the 30 female grids and none of the mens. Similar constructs such as daring did not appear. A comparison of the constructs shows that not only are there very few commonly used constructs; there was no grouping of shared constructs. These business owners were not seen, for example to be ambitious, condent or innovative. Kellys (1969) personal construct theory suggests that key systems of constructs are likely to be shared by groups. The literature on entrepreneurs might suggest that a key system of constructs might have been generated, such as those associated with being super-normal. However, this is not a clear nding in our research. The second nding was that females generated signicantly more constructs (female mean, 6.87; male mean, 5.87; t 2 0.299; df 54.1; p , 0.01). The 30 women

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overall generated 209 different constructs while the same number of males generated 175 constructs. Our third, and most important nding in relation to how gender is construed is that instead of a list of constructs socially constructed as male such as competitive, active, independent, decisive and self-condent being generated, a more androgenous list of personality traits was found such as pondering, guarded and tactile. The constructs used to describe business owners were not loaded with male symbolism. Constructs such as aggressiveness, assertiveness, determination, strong leadership behaviour, highly developed communication skills, objective and analytical thinking did not feature. Nor were the females being described as lesser to men or being different, for example they were not construed as more warm, understanding, emotional and caring than men. However, there were instances where a construct would differentiate or distinguish between how male and female business owners were described and rated. Using SPSS, the constructs female and male business owners used about male and female business owners had their means compared with t-tests. Tables II and III show the signicant, distinguishing constructs for the men and women in our sample; there are 22 constructs (out of 206) for the females and 16 (out of 176) for the males. For both genders, this could be said to be a similar rate and not many more than might be expected

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No. Grid Construct label (1) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 2 2 2 2 2 4 5 7 7 10 10 10 11 12 12 12 14 14 14 22 23 24 Self-reliant Meek Open Good communicator Isolated Static Not well-known Unapproachable Reactive Business not yet well established Working hard to make more business No nancial difculties Not Willing to help Not motivated by money Less nancial experience No business vision No compassion No patience Not organised Traditional Traditional Do not do networking for business

Construct label (7) Delegator Arrogant Insular Poor communicator Networker Growth orientated Well-known, established Approachable Proactive Established business Relaxed, not growth oriented Financially struggling Willing to help Motivated by making money Financial experience Business vision Compassion Patience Well-organised Open mind ness Creative Golf course for networking clients

Male mean 1.33 6.67 6.33 5.33 1.33 6.33 6.67 4.67 4.33 7.00 2.33 7.00 5.00 6.67 6.33 6.00 2.33 2.00 1.33 1.67 5.67 7.00

Female mean 6.00 3.00 2.33 1.67 7.00 2.67 2.67 6.33 6.33 1.67 7.00 2.33 7.00 3.33 2.00 3.00 6.33 6.67 7.00 6.00 4.00 2.33

t-test value 4.43 2 3.05 2 4.24 2 4.92 17.00 2 4.92 2 3.21 3.54 4.24 2 8.00 NA NA NA 2 4.47 2 6.50 2 3.67 5.37 7.00 17.00 6.50 2 5.00 2 5.29

Note: NA, zero variance preventing t-test calculation but still a clear difference

Table II. Distinguishing constructs female business owners

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No. Grid Construct label (1) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 1 1 4 6 7 9 12 15 17 18 23 23 28 29 30 30

Construct label (7)

Male mean 7.00 7.00 7.00 4.33 3.00 7.00 6.33 6.67 7.00 6.67 4.66 1.00 7.00 6.33 3.67 5.67

Female mean 5.00 5.00 5.33 7.00 5.33 3.66 5.00 3.67 4.33 3.67 2.00 7.00 5.33 2.67 6.33 3.67

t-test value NA NA NA 8.00 7.00 NA NA 2 3.18 NA 2 3.18 NA NA 2 5.00 2 4.92 3.58 2 4.24

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Table III. Distinguishing constructs male business owners

15 16

Condent Not condent Outgoing Not outgoing and introvert More faith in ability Less faith in ability Less experienced More experienced Not forgiving Forgiving Poor people skills Very good people skills Not closely associated Closely associated with with the brand the brand Discomfort with nancial/ Comfortable with nance numerical issues and accounting Does not see a wider picture in Can see a wider picture in clients business clients business Not a team player Team player Easy going Opinionated Masculine Feminine Business acumen/seeing Focused on detail bigger picture Conventional protestant work Relaxed about work ethic Quiet Talkative Sense of humour Lack of sense of humour

by chance. Grid F2 in Table I is the respondent (male or female) with the most, ve, gender discriminating constructs. About 11 women respondents used constructs in a way that distinguished between the male and female business owners they knew; 13 male respondents used constructs in a similar way. Out of the two groups of 30, 19 female and 17 male had no constructs that clearly distinguished male from female. Those men and women who saw male and female business owners as different are, then, in a minority. Only ve female and three male had more than one construct that distinguished males from females. In order to examine the possibility that there might be gender differences in some combination of constructs, a second SPSS analysis looked at each individuals grid for linear combinations of constructs: the general linear model procedure was used and a Wilks lambda test calculated. Table IV shows that only two of the 60 results are signicant at the 5 per cent level. This was a level that might only be expected by chance. There was then no clear pattern of distinction on the basis of sex on the combination of constructs in the grids. A search was then done for gender differences for the whole grid employing a third SPSS analysis using the CatPCA procedure, which represents the differences between elements based only on the rank order information in the construct ratings. Table IV shows only eight dimension differences signicant at 5 per cent (three females and ve males); six would be expected by chance. There were only seven overall differences signicant at 5 per cent with the Wilks lambda (six female and one male); three would be expected by chance. This again shows no clear pattern of sex differences. Table IV also summarizes the three analyses. Slightly more than half the female respondents (16 of 30) had some form of signicant result at the broad 10 per cent level.

Clear No. of t-tests at 5 per cent M/F No. differences (Tables II and III) F F F F F F F F F F F F F F F F M M M M M M M M M M M M M 2 4 5 7 10 11 12 14 16 18 20 22 23 24 26 30 1 4 6 7 9 12 14 15 18 23 28 29 30 0 0 0 0 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 2 0 0 0 5 1 1 2 1 0 3 3 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 2

Wilks l (%) NS 10 NS NS NS NS NS NS 10 NS NS NS NS NS 1 NS NS NS 0.1 NS NS NS NS NS NS NS NS NS NS

CatPCA dim 1 (%) NS 10 NS 1 0.1 NS 10 10 NS NS 10 NS NS 1 NS 10 1 NS NS NS NS NS NS 5 NS 10 5 NS NS

CatPCA dim 2 (%) NS NS 5 NS NS NS NS NS NS 10 NS NS 5 NS NS NS NS NS NS 5 5 NS 10 NS NS NS NS NS NS

CatPCA overall (%) 5 NS NS 0.1 5 NS 5 5 NS NS NS NS 10 5 NS NS 1 NS NS NS 10 NS NS NS NS 10 10 NS NS

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Table IV. Summary of business owner grids with signicant differences

Slightly less than half (13 of 30) the male respondents had a signicant result at the same level. Statistical tests would not normally go as far as reporting results at the 10 per cent level so we have go further than is usual and still found that there is very little or no clear pattern of sex differences to be found in how the constructs of males and females are rated. When constructing the grids with the respondents we found that three of the 30 male respondents found it difcult to name three female business owners they knew and one male had less than 3 male elements. Table V shows the details. The knowledge of other
Variable Less than three male elements Less than three female elements Not had self as element Number using any celebrity More than six constructs Less than six constructs Number with any zero variance constructs Males 1 3 9 3 6 7 16 Females 0 0 4 1 12 1 15

Table V. Details on grids

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business owners was, in these few cases, a little limited. However, their grids are included in the analysis. No females named less than three male and three female business owners they knew. Three males and one female included celebrities such as Richard Branson in their list of business owners. These were included, as we did not want to impose our restrictions on the constructs being generated by the respondents. The respondents were also permitted to use themselves as one of the elements; nine males and four females did this. Zero variance constructs were removed from the Wilks lambda analyses. Discussion of ndings These are the constructs elicited about how these business owners construe other business owners of whom they have rst hand knowledge, with the few noted exceptions. One reason why there are few differences in the constructs generated by men and women may be that female business owners were being seen to have male characteristics. Yet, if this was the case, then more masculine characteristics, such as those identied in the literature should have emerged. This clearly did not happen. Another reason might be that the women were in non-traditional jobs. For example, for Grid 4 amongst the males, there was a female who was a farmer. However, examples of women or men in non-traditional roles are not the norm in this sample. An alternative explanation was that men and women perceive the business world as neutral and equal. They may be rejecting the suggestion that sex, gender or stereotypes may have a signicant impact on business ownership. There may be a belief in meritocracy in the business world. This explanation would be t with that of Lewis (2006) who found that female entrepreneurs saw gender as something external to the business experience and something that can be overcome if need be, reinforcing the conventional view that gender was not in any way inherent or embedded in the business world. The similarities between men and women are emphasized rather than their differences. This explanation would also t with Baker et al. (1997) who argued that men and women are subject to common institutional and economic structures so behave similarly in creating similar businesses. There are limitations of the research design utilized here. The sample was limited to just one area of Britain and the businesses had all been established in the last three years. This will inuence the generalizability of the ndings. Given the very varied list of constructs generated, it is easy to see why researchers might choose to impose constructs or attributes for measurement. However, we wished to adopt a different approach in order to see what constructs would arise naturally. Here, we are looking at the ordering and organization of the constructs male and female business owner for male and female business owners. Conclusions Our ndings challenge the stereotypical view of what it takes to be an entrepreneur or business owner, as well as the identity of entrepreneurs in terms of masculine and super-normal characteristics. We need to stop using the white middle class hero as the main unit of analysis to construe entrepreneurship and business ownership, one that maintains the dichotomy between maleness and femaleness and that perpetuates existing social inequality where women are seen as lesser. The historically masculine framed basis of the heroic entrepreneur deserves to be critically re-examined, particularly if business owners do not see themselves as heroes, or call themselves entrepreneurs. If there are few differences in the leadership behaviours of men and

women and they do not establish gender-stereotypic organizational characteristics in their businesses then the emphasis on difference should not be prevalent in the social construction of men and women business owners and entrepreneurs. We need to stop undervaluing and underplaying the role of female entrepreneurs and business owners (Henry and Johnston, 2007; Marlow et al., 2009) as this may be contributing to the lower number of women found in these roles. We must also avoid research methods that draw on stereotypes of differences between men and women as entrepreneurs or business owners that potentially reify and distort differences. In this research, business owners were not discussing other male and female business owners as different. Both men and women are equally capable of characteristics such as initiative taking and accomplishment, being active, independent, decisive and self-condent. Also, we should not conclude or state that womens business underperforms against mens unless variables such as age of business, industry and others have been controlled for. As Mirchandani (1999) has argued, research should be pursued without the notion of an essentialist woman at its core. May be it is time to consider a new assessment of businesses performance that would incorporate new measures such as work-life balance, or as Brush (1992) suggests employee satisfaction, social contribution and goal achievement and effectiveness. Perhaps, we should reconsider the yardsticks against which womens businesses are advantaged or disadvantaged. Specically, we should question using high-growth businesses and relative risk as the standard of comparison for all businesses. If the male model of entrepreneurship and business ownership predominates, then women are less likely to see themselves as business owners and entrepreneurs. The similarities between men and women business owners are highlighted by this research, rather than the differences highlighted in most of the previous literature. This research also demonstrates the central importance in research method. A research method that presents stereotypes of male and female characteristics can reify differences between men and women. Using the personal construct repertory grid methodology showed how those differences did not emerge.
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