On Gendered Justification: A Framework for Understanding Men's and Women's Entrepreneurial Resource‐Acquisition

Abstract

AbstractStudies of gender in entrepreneurship acknowledge that gender norms are at the root of women’s disadvantage in resource‐acquisition but provide limited guidance on how societal (macro‐level) norms and their gendering influence entrepreneurs’ micro‐level behaviours and stakeholders’ decisions within local contexts. To address this lacuna, we draw on gender theory and French Pragmatist Sociology (FPS) to offer G‐FPS: an analytical and methodological framework of resource‐claiming as a process of justifying, engaging and testing, embedded in normative context that constructs gender roles and social worth. Through analysis of a historical case of business resource‐acquisition in pre‐state Israel, we theorize and demonstrate how local gendered norms steered men and women to diverge in their justifications and self‐presentation when making their claims, and how stakeholders evaluated those claims according to their fit with situated gender expectations. We thus illustrate how macro‐level gender norms infiltrate and operate within micro‐level processing, persistently favouring men over women.