This document outlines three sub-projects that analyze gendered constructions of entrepreneurship across online spaces: 1) Mapping visual representations of entrepreneurial masculinities and femininities, 2) Unpacking representations of entrepreneurial advice online, and 3) Analyzing the journey of a popular female entrepreneurial image. The researchers trace images and texts across platforms to understand how entrepreneurship is gendered. They discuss challenges of reflexively analyzing online images and platforms, tracing as an ongoing process, and using a montage approach. The second sub-project analyzes entrepreneurial advice through a framework of critical public pedagogy and examines how advice shapes subjects according to capitalist norms in a gendered way. Preliminary findings suggest advice constructs entrepreneurship

1. TRACING GENDERED CONSTRUCTIONS OF
ENTREPRENEURSHIP ACROSS ONLINE SPACES
Professor Katrina Pritchard
Dr Helen Williams
Dr Maggie C Miller
@ProfKPritchard @HelenCWilliams

2. THREE ANALYTIC SUB-PROJECTS
A: Mapping online visual repertoires of entrepreneurial masculinities and
femininities (Online First GWO)
B: Unpacking representations of entrepreneurial advice online (EGOS/ML)
C: Who’s that girl? The journey of one popular female image beyond
entrepreneurship (Parked!)

3. PROJECT OVERVIEW: WHERE WE STARTED
Search
Top Ten
Search
Related
Images
Agency
Categorisatio
n and Tags
Tracing back to image source
Tracing sideways within the search engine
Texts &
Additiona
l Images
Online
Media
Use
Tracing forward online
Three Analytic Sub-
Projects
A: Mapping visual
repertoires of
entrepreneurial
masculinities and
femininities (Online First
GWO)
B: Unpacking
representations of
entrepreneurial advice
(EGOS/ML)
C: Who’s that girl? The
journey of one popular
female image beyond
entrepreneurship (Parked!)

4. TRACING METHODS
Top Images Related Images Additional Images
Portrait
Analysis
(Davison, 2010)
Physical, Dress,
Interpersonal,
Spatial Codes
Combined Visual Analysis CVA (Pritchard, 2020)
Categorical Compositional Montage (what are these images of)
Thematic Compositional Analysis (how are these images constructed)
Semiotic Analysis (what might these images mean)
Specific Visual features:
Gaze (e.g. Martinez, 2020) and Gesture (e.g. Kendon, 2004)

5. METHODOLOGICAL CHALLENGES
12
1. Reflexive engagement with
online images
2. Working with and across
platforms
3. Tracing as a never-ending
journey
4. Montage approach to analysis

6. METHODOLOGICAL CHALLENGES
1. REFLEXIVE ENGAGEMENT WITH ONLINE IMAGES
12

7. METHODOLOGICAL CHALLENGES
2. WORKING WITH AND ACROSS PLATFORMS
12
MAY 2022
NOT!

8. METHODOLOGICAL CHALLENGES
3. TRACING AS A NEVER-ENDING JOURNEY
12

9. METHODOLOGICAL CHALLENGES
4. MONTAGE APPROACH TO ANALYSIS
12
Male Hands
Female Hands

10. WHERE ARE WE
NOW?
• Slightly frazzled
• Lots of ideas for
things we could have
done differently
• Continually alert to
the use of
commercial images
especially by our
institutions
• Plotting where to go
next!

11. PROJECT B:
ENTREPRENEURIAL ADVICE
One Rule, Three Tips, Five Reasons…

12. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
CRITICAL PUBLIC PEDAGOGY
(GIROUX, 2010)
• Public pedagogy provides a focus on
processes and sites of education beyond
formal schooling.
• Critical public pedagogy assumes sites of
popular culture are sites of both
domination and contestation.
• Giroux (2010) draws on cultural studies
literature that focuses on popular culture
as a site of socialization and an arena in
which hegemony is reproduced as well as

13. THE ROLE OF ENTREPRENEURIAL
‘EXPERTISE’
• We are interested in the role online
advice has in shaping us into being
replicable subjects that are more able
to contribute to a capitalist regime.
• The construction of an ‘entrepreneurial
mindset’.
• In particular we examine how advice is
hyper-gendered; reproducing accepted
masculinized and feminized
entrepreneurial subjects.

14. DO YOU HAVE
WHAT IT TAKES?
• Large body of work
focused on what
characteristics are causally
linked to being more
‘entrepreneurial’. This is
linked to the development
of an ‘Entrepreneurial
Mindset’.
• Much of the
Entrepreneurship
Education literature is
constructed around the
idea that particular
entrepreneurial skills can

15. METHODOLOGY
29 obtained through tracing
top female images.
22 of these sites were aimed
explicitly at women.
17 obtained through tracing top
male images.
2 of these sites offering advice
explicitly to men.
Discursive analysis (Jørgensen & Phillips, 2002) of text across all 46 sites to understand how ‘advice’ was
constructed and gendered.

16. PROVISIONAL FINDINGS
Be the entrepreneur
• Here we unpack advice on becoming an entrepreneur; broadly constructed as an individual process of
learning whether you naturally have the right characteristics.
• Discursively, expertise is positioned as an expertise of the self; defined in neoliberal terms as a form of
‘everyday neoliberalism’ (Mirowski, 2013: 92).
Face the challenge and grow
• Across data notions of challenge were gendered and presented as critical to entrepreneurial learning.
• Rising to these challenges requires the need for expert advice to successfully negotiate and grow from
them.
Share the secrets
• Entrepreneurial advice appeared to be drawn from the experiences of those who have ‘been there and
done that’.
• Becoming a successful entrepreneur not only requires seeking advice from entrepreneurial experts, but
also advising others on your own entrepreneurial expertise.

17. CONCLUSIONS
• More work needed to
understand the role of online
media (following Stead & Elliot,
2019).
• More work to be done to
understand and theorise the role
of advice in the shaping of
everyday hyper-gendered
subjects.
• Role of online spaces in the
reproduction of entrepreneurial
citizens… the ultimate neoliberal
subject?