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Investigating Uk Women's Digital Entrepreneurship

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Investigating Uk Women's Digital Entrepreneurship UNMASKING THE INTERNET: INVESTIGATING UK WOMEN’S DIGITAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP THROUGH INTERSECTIONALITY ANGELA CARMINA MARTINEZ DY, B.A., MSc. (Dist) Thesis submitted to the University of Nottingham for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy July 2015 © 2015 Angela C. Martinez Dy All rights reserved. 2 Abstract Unmasking the Internet: Investigating UK Women’s Digital Entrepreneurship through Intersectionality This thesis investigates the experiences of women digital entrepreneurs in the United Kingdom from an intersectional cyberfeminist perspective. Informed by feminist theories of technology and critical entrepreneurship scholarship, it challenges mainstream discourse on digital entrepreneurship with the argument that, similar to traditional (offline) entrepreneurship, online or digital entrepreneurship is deeply embedded in the social world. It draws upon intersectional feminist theory that conceptualises the social world as composed of intersecting hierarchies of race, class, and gender, in which individuals and groups are positioned in dynamic yet durable ways, and by which they are affected simultaneously. This positionality is understood to be tied to unequal resource distribution, and for this reason, holds important implications when mapped to extant entrepreneurship theory. The thesis also provides interdisciplinary evidence for the continued coding of Internet technology as predominantly white and male, and for the online environment itself as a stratified and unequal space, countering public discourse that portrays it as a neutral and meritocratic ‘great equaliser.’ Building upon this theoretical framework, the thesis proposes, investigates and answers the following research question: ‘How do social positionality and resource access affect UK women’s experiences of digital entrepreneurship’? Underpinned by a critical realist methodology and using thematic, retroductive and comparative case study analytical methods, a qualitative study of twenty-six women digital entrepreneurs was undertaken. The objectives of the research were: To address the theoretical and empirical gap in existing entrepreneurship literature on digital entrepreneurial activities To ascertain how gender, class, race/ethnicity, and other relevant categories of social positionality intersect and affect resource access in the context of digital entrepreneurship. Evidence suggests that social positionality (in particular, the intersections of gender, class and race) have significant impacts upon the experiences of participants, including their reasons for engaging in digital entrepreneurship as well as in particular industries and sectors, their access to crucial resources such as finance, know-how, and networks, and to what extent they are able to utilise the online environment for entrepreneurial activity. The thesis makes a number of novel contributions to the literature on digital entrepreneurship. In particular, it proposes a critique of the Internet as a neutral and meritocratic space for entrepreneurial activity, due to persistent inequality in the offline world of which it is a part. It extends the entrepreneurship literature with a theoretical framework and empirical evidence illustrating the constraining and/or enabling effects of offline social positionality on digital entrepreneurial activity. In this way, it develops a platform for future research into the relationships between social positionality, entrepreneurship and digital technologies in the contemporary era. 3 Acknowledgements I am indebted to my PhD supervisors, Dr. Lee Martin and Prof. Susan Marlow, without whom I would not have had this opportunity, and from whom I have learned so much. Thank you to Dr. Louise Scholes for supervising my first year and master’s dissertation, and Dr. Andrew Greenman for entertaining my earliest inclinations to research. My sincerest thanks to Dr. Maura McAdam and Dr. Janine Swail, who examined my PhD as critical friends, and all of the colleagues and reviewers who read my papers, listened to my presentations and offered their insight, comments and feedback. My gratitude goes to the University of Nottingham for the Vice Chancellor’s Scholarship for International Research Excellence and Nottingham University Business School Scholarship through which my studies were funded. I would also like to recognise and thank the staff of the Nottingham University Business School Doctoral Programme, especially Prof. Heidi Winklhofer and Ms. Andrea Tomlinson, for their excellent help and support. Doing a PhD is a life-changing experience, and my family and loved ones have made it possible for me to accomplish such a feat. To my mother, Maria del Carmen Martinez-Patterson: you paved the way. Muchisimas gracias. Te amo infinitamente. Thank you to my stepdad, Mark Patterson II, and my grandfather Ernesto Martinez, for the incisive inquiry, thought-provoking conversations and historical perspectives. My Martinez aunts, uncles and cousins, thanks for keeping me laughing. Thank you to my father, Benjamin Dy, for showing me how to shine. To Syisha Francis, Thomas Higgins, and the rest of the inner circle – thank you for your love. I couldn’t have done it without you. I am also grateful for the friendship of my Nottingham University Business School PhD cohort, office mates, and Doctoral Society members past and present – you have made what could have been quite a lonely time into a very lovely one. This work is dedicated to the memory of my late grandmother, Maria del Carmen ‘Coty’ Ferraz Martinez. Thank you for teaching me that big things are accomplished one small step at a time. I love you. 4 Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction.........................................................................................................................10 Chapter 2: Entrepreneurial Activity in Online Environments ..................................................................15 2.1 The Entrepreneurial Conversation................................................................................................15 What is Entrepreneurship? ............................................................................................................15 Entrepreneurship as a Process of Opportunity Development .........................................................17 A Socially Embedded, Resource-Dependent Process ......................................................................19 2.2 Digital Entrepreneurship Literature: A Panacea Ignored? .............................................................21 Inequality in the Online Environment.............................................................................................21 Defining Digital Entrepreneurship..................................................................................................23 Marginalised Entrepreneurial Actors Online...................................................................................24 2.3 Typologies of Digital Entrepreneurial Activity...............................................................................26 2.4 Rhetoric on Digital Entrepreneurship: Levelling the Playing Field?................................................31 2.5 Summary .....................................................................................................................................36 Chapter 3: Digital Entrepreneurship and Intersectionality......................................................................38 3.1 Impact of the Success Bias on Studies of Digital Entrepreneurship ...............................................38 Necessity vs. Opportunity Entrepreneurship..................................................................................41 3.2 Self-Employment as Entrepreneurship by Marginalised Actors.....................................................42 Problematising the Myths of Entrepreneurship..............................................................................44 Contextualising Women’s Digital Entrepreneurship Using Critical Gender Theory ..........................46 3.3 Intersectionality, Positionality and Resource Distribution.............................................................48 Introducing Intersectionality..........................................................................................................48 Introducing Positionality................................................................................................................51 Implications for Resource Distribution ...........................................................................................52 3.4 How Positionality Advances Entrepreneurship Studies.................................................................53 From ‘Sameness vs. Difference’ to Structural Conditions................................................................53 From Social Networks to Social Hierarchies....................................................................................55 Bringing Forth a Multi-Level Analyses ............................................................................................56 3.5 Cyberfeminism and Digital Entrepreneurship...............................................................................57 3.6 Summary .....................................................................................................................................59 Chapter 4: Methodology - A Critical Realist Feminist Approach to Intersectionality and the Internet .....61 5 4.1 Introduction.................................................................................................................................61
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