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Seed project: Gender, Entrepreneurship and Digitalization: Challenging Gender Inequality in ICT Higher Education

The main objective for this seed funding project within the knowledge platform Mobilising and Managing Sustainable Transition is to explore the relationship between gender, entrepreneurship and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). It specifically aims to explore on why women choose some ICT-related higher education programs and not others, and how they perceive and relate to entrepreneurship, for example as a natural progression after graduation. Theoretically, this project aims to challenge the mainstream representations of entrepreneurship and ICT as male-dominated and male-gendered fields by focusing on women’s perceptions and perspectives.

Title

Gender, Entrepreneurship and Digitalization: Challenging Gender Inequality in ICT Higher Education
Applicants
Erdelina Kurti - Post doctoral fellow, Department of Informatics, Faculty of Technology
Mexhid Ferati - Associate professor, Department of Informatics, Faculty of Technology
Viktorija Kalonaityte - Associate professor, Department of Organization and Entrepreneurship, School of Business and Economics
Project period
September-December 2022
Research areas in this seed-project
Digital transformation, entrepreneurship, ICT higher education.

More about the project

Feminist entrepreneurship scholars have repeatedly shown how mainstream representations of entrepreneurship are often informed by masculinity as a tacit norm, and that women’s and men’s entrepreneurship is often compared without a deeper gender analysis, which typically leads to depiction of women as less entrepreneurial and deficient when compared to their male counterparts. However, a less often discussed aspect of gender and entrepreneurship are the intersections among the male gendered entrepreneurial archetype, technology and digitalization. Examples of this link are many, ranging from incubators and investors that are heavily oriented toward the high growth technology companies to idolized star entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. In other words, technology, entrepreneurship and gender are deeply intertwined, and so, in order to understand and challenge gender inequality within entrepreneurship, it is pivotal to render visible the links between entrepreneurship and ICT and to challenge gender inequality within the ICT field.

Seed projects within Digital Transformations

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