title: The Scientific Reproduction of Gender Inequality: A Discourse Analysis of Research Texts on Women's Entrepreneurship
author:  Helene Ahl 
description: Helene Ahl has produced a ground-breaking work for the field of gender and organization studies. -- <i>Marta B. Cals, Ph.D., Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, USA</i><br /><br />This is an important analysis of how scholars have come to think about entrepreneurship and gender. -- <i>William B. Gartner, Professor, University of Southern California, USA</i>
zlib_text: Why Research on
  Women Entrepreneurs
  Needs New Directions
  Helene Ahl
  Research articles on women’s entrepreneurship reveal, in spite of intentions to the con-
  trary and in spite of inconclusive research results, a tendency to recreate the idea of
  women as being secondary to men and of women’s businesses being of less signiﬁcance
  or, at best, as being a complement. Based on a discourse analysis, this article discusses
  what research practices cause these results. It suggests new research directions that do
  not reproduce women’s subordination but capture more and richer aspects of women’s
  entrepreneurship.
  Introduction
  Several authors maintain that research on women entrepreneurs suffers from a number
  of shortcomings. These include a one-sided empirical focus (Gatewood, Carter, Brush,
  Greene, & Hart, 2003), a lack of theoretical grounding (Brush, 1992), the neglect of
  structural, historical, and cultural factors (Chell & Baines, 1998; Nutek, 1996), the use
  of male-gendered measuring instrum