A Qualitative Look into Gendered Entrepreneurship in Turkey

Abstract

People have started to question mainstream, supposedly gender-neutral, entrepreneurship definitions and perceptionswith the confrontations of feminist perspective. Considering entrepreneurship as a gendered concept, in this study wehandled gender as a lens in entrepreneurship. The purpose of this study is to portray gender specific characteristics andperceptions of entrepreneurship in Turkey. With this objective, we analyzed interviews with entrepreneurs in two Turkishentrepreneurship-focused business magazines and one popular business blog consisting of valuable startup and womenentrepreneurs’ stories and interviews. We performed qualitative analysis on the content of these interviews to understand the perspectives of female and male entrepreneurs, and the differences between them as to their statements. Weanalyzed the choice of words and interviewees’ discourses. As to the findings, the most referred element of genderedentrepreneurship is family embeddedness based on stereotypical beliefs and norm systems. In addition, this findingshows how culturally embedded beliefs deeply effect women’s expectations/projections, barriers and needs concerningentrepreneurship. In Turkey, there is only a handful of studies concerning women entrepreneurship from the perspectiveof gender as a lens. Therefore, in this article, gender specific perceptions of entrepreneurship in Turkey as a developingand a masculine country were revealed.