You never travel alone: challenging the masculine ethos of individualism in academic entrepreneurship

Abstract

This study focuses on women’s experiences of becoming and being academic entrepreneurs in the research area of health technology in Finland and Sweden. We follow the feminist critics of entrepreneurship studies, which focus mainly on how women could fit better into the masculine idea of entrepreneurship and thus how women could become more risk-taking and self-centred. Through our analyses of women’s career interviews, we argue that academic entrepreneurship is a social matter where the desire to benefit others, a wish to work in a non-hierarchical environment, and social relations in the private and public spheres of life matter. We further show how entrepreneurial journeys are quite versatile and depend on women’s life situations, for example, but also on the academic structures that appear more rigid in Finland than in Sweden. Finally, we state that academic entrepreneurship demands openness to search for and receive support.