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Article Excerpt
The primary goal of this study was to examine the role of proactive personality in moderating the influence of the widely-held 'masculine' stereotype about entrepreneurs on intentions to become an entrepreneur. Manipulating stereotype threat, results from eighty young women indicated that women with more proactive personality were more significantly affected by exposure to the commonly known stereotype about entrepreneurs and had a significant decrease in entrepreneurial intentions compared to women with less proactive personality. The results are discussed in terms of their theoretical significance and practical relevance.
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Most entrepreneurship researchers and educators agree that a very large part of what is called 'entrepreneurial' activity is a direct outcome of individual intentions and subsequent actions over a considerable period of time (Shaver, Gartner, Crosby, Bakalarova, & Gatewood, 2001). Intentions profoundly impact and usually determine most entrepreneurial behavior such as self-employment and new venture creation (Katz, 1992). Scholars believe that entrepreneurial intentions are central to understanding entrepreneurship as they are the first step in a sustained, long-term process of starting a new business (Krueger, 1993). Because entrepreneurship often involves dealing with unexpected problems and challenges in a continuously evolving environment, people who have a proclivity to take action to change their current circumstances (referred to as 'proactive personality' by Bateman and Crant, 1993) may be more likely to become entrepreneurs than others (Crant, 1996).
Although the number of women entrepreneurs has drastically increased over the years (Wilson, Marlino, & Kickul, 2004), entrepreneurship is still largely a male-dominated area (de Bruin, Brush, & Welter, 2006). Empirical evidence indicates that almost twice as many men as women become entrepreneurs, and that these differences are consistent across most countries (Acs, Arenius, Hay, & Minniti, 2005; Baron, Markman, & Hirsa, 2001). Men not only own a larger share of businesses, they also overwhelmingly outnumber women in industries like high-technology that get the most notice from media, public, and policy-makers (Marlow, 2002). Moreover, women continue to report lower entrepreneurial intentions suggesting that gender differences in the rate and pattern of entrepreneurship are likely to continue in the future (Zhao, Seibert, & Hills, 2005).
Though many factors may be responsible for lower entrepreneurial intentions among women, some evidence suggests that gender-role stereotypes--social beliefs about the association of certain jobs and occupations with masculine characteristics--play an important role in influencing women's entrepreneurial intentions (Baron et al., 2001; Fagenson & Marcus, 1991). In the United States, stereotypes associated with entrepreneurs are heavily weighted towards traits considered to be "masculine" (Buttner & Rosen, 1988; Fagenson & Marcus, 1991). Ahl (2006) selected contemporary management and entrepreneurship articles that defined entrepreneurship to compare the words used to describe entrepreneurs with those used to describe men and women. She found that entrepreneurs are generally described in stereotypically masculine terms such as 'strong-willed' and 'resolute', while feminine characteristics such as 'sensitive to the needs of others', 'gentle', 'shy', and 'yielding' are the direct opposites of entrepreneurial characteristics. Despite a large number of women entrepreneurs in retail and service industries ('female-typed fields' as described by Anna, Chandler, Jansen, & Mero, 1999), the general stereotype of entrepreneurs continues to associate them with traditionally masculine characteristics and women are not seen as fitting the image of a typical entrepreneur (de Bruin et al., 2006).
Commonly held gender-role stereotypes not only influence the perception and evaluation of women by others, they also affect women's desire to engage in stereotyped tasks, such as entrepreneurship (Heilman, 1983). In this study, we use an experimental methodology to examine the role of proactive personality in influencing women's entrepreneurial intentions when faced with stereotypes about characteristics attributed to entrepreneurs. In doing so, we make an important contribution to the scholarly understanding of the role of gender stereotypes in influencing women's entry in self-employment and entrepreneurship.
Theoretical Background
Proactive Personality
Proactive personality refers to the extent to which people are willing to "take action to influence their environments" (Crant, 1995: 532). More proactive people are relatively unconstrained by situational forces and are willing to affect environmental change (Bateman & Crant, 1993). They show initiative, identify opportunities, act on them, and persevere until they meet their objectives. They confront and solve problems, and take individual responsibility to make an impact on the world around them (Crant, 2000). They anticipate environmental changes and take advantage of opportunities to improve their situation. Proactive behavior involves stepping forward to either improve current situations and circumstances or to create new ones. Thus, a proactive personality helps people deal with expected or unexpected events and changes as well as enables them to influence and transform their environment.
Bateman and Crant (1993) introduced proactive personality as an individual-level, dispositional measure of people's proclivity to take initiative to influence their situation and environment. The proactive personality concept has been applied in a variety of settings and used to study a diverse set of organizational behaviors and outcomes. Research has established that proactive personality impacts individual job performance (Crant, 1995), career outcomes (Seibert, Crant, & Kraimer, 1999), organizational innovation (Kickul & Gundry, 2002), leadership (Crant & Bateman, 2000), team performance (Kirkman & Rosen, 1999), and entrepreneurial intentions (Crant, 1996) and behavior (Becherer & Maurer, 1999). Thus, there is ample empirical evidence that proactive personality may be an important and positive influence on individual, team, and organizational outcomes.
Gender Stereotypes
Stereotyping refers to the human tendency to categorize people into general groups based on attributes such as race or gender and to then develop beliefs about characteristics and behavior of individual members of these groups (Powell, Butterfield & Parent, 2002). Gender may be a universal dimension for stereotyping people because it is a visually prominent physical feature that enables people to quickly sort others into two distinct categories--men and women (Fiske & Taylor, 1991; Powell & Graves, 2003). These gender stereotypes, widely shared beliefs about characteristics attributed to men and women, are commonly held in society and well-documented in the literature (Orser, 1994; Heilman, Block, Martell, & Simon, 1989).
Men and women are believed to differ on social traits (often labeled 'communal') as well as achievement-oriented traits (often labeled 'agentic'). Women are commonly believed to have more communal qualities (expressiveness, connectedness, relatedness, kindness, supportiveness, timidness) whereas men are associated with more agentic qualities (independence, aggressiveness, autonomy, instrumentality, courage). These stereotypes tend to be oppositional in nature--the characteristics positively associated with men (e.g. aggressiveness, autonomous) are considered undesirable for women and vice versa (e.g. kind, supportive). Gender stereotypes not only...
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