“Will I ever be at ease?” – autoethnographic vignettes of doing gender research in entrepreneurship Open Access

This paper reflects on the author’s reflexive and affective experience of a female junior researcher studying the performance of gender in entrepreneurship with a focus on the entrepreneurial pitching context. I started my doctoral research project on gender and entrepreneurial pitching in 2020, with the focus on entrepreneurial pitching, addressing the embeddedness of gender in the process of making the pitch, as well as in the act of pitching. Following this direction, as the main author, I had collected qualitative data to understand the role of gender in entrepreneurial pitching in the frontstage setting. In summer 2021 and 2022, I was granted access to attend ten entrepreneurial pitch training sessions of an accelerator program for (very) early-stage ventures. Along with the pitch training, I also participated in the final Demo Days and some social activities during the program. I was very excited and hopeful when this happened. While it was indeed a rewarding experience, it made me realize how researchers’ reflexivity is attached to the research process and is reflected through interactions with entrepreneurial actors and the engagement with entrepreneurial framing (Snihur et al., 2021).

Embarking on an unknown setting, I constantly took notes (over 200 pages) during my visits to the sessions and to the accelerator space, aiming to make sense of an entrepreneurial environment with which I was not familiar. To my surprise, the notes depicted many emotions and personal entanglements related to being a female junior scholar, whose research critiques gendered norms in entrepreneurship. Specifically, the notes highlighted my overwhelming uneasiness of being in an unfamiliar context and the paradox between being an insider and an outsider in the researched context. Although there has been attention to writing differently in organization studies (Calás and Smircich, 2006), personal experiences (Katila, 2019) and academic writing (Pullen, 2018), there is a lack of attention to affective and reflexive writing about specific parts of academic work, such as the data collection experience. Through autoethnographic vignettes (Alkhaled, 2017) and memory work (Haug, 1985), the study’s objective is to describe the tension between trying to adapt to the entrepreneurial environment and being critical of entrepreneurial pitching practices, which exhibit various gendered performative acts and showcase the influence of gendered norms.

Studies on gender and entrepreneurship mainly focus on women entrepreneurs’ experiences, challenges and efforts to fit in. For example, women are expected to negotiate their identity to portray the man-preneur (Smith, 2021) through their networks with men entrepreneurs and investors (McAdam et al., 2019). While the focus on women entrepreneurs provides insights to understand the dominance of gendered norms in entrepreneurship, it lacks the perspectives of other entrepreneurial actors, such as incubator and accelerator employees, coaches and mentors, who engage in entrepreneurship and its norms on a daily basis.

This study provides personal affective experience of a junior researcher observing, accepting and attempting to be at ease with entrepreneurial masculinities through the interactions with entrepreneurial actors and with start-up pitching standards. Moreover, the autoethnographic notes were reflected upon through the theoretical lens of Sara Ahmed’s concept of use (Ahmed, 2019). Ahmed’s exploration of use addresses how environments are designed to make certain bodies feel “at home” while others may feel out of place. While affect theory helps me to be reflexive on my positioning within my doctoral study context – entrepreneurial pitching, Ahmed’s concept of “use” provides a philosophical space to think and helps structure my understanding of the useful paths I followed, how I “lived, felt, and practiced” (Ahmed et al., 2000, p. 15), and most importantly, whether I was truly at ease with the uses I followed when I was collecting data in the field. Consequently, the study contributes to gender and entrepreneurship literature by integrating affect theory and “use” theory into business studies and demonstrating how autoethnography can reveal hidden affective dimensions of entrepreneurship. Additionally, the study offers new insights into gendered norms beyond policy barriers and simple comparisons between male and female entrepreneurial actors.

Entrepreneurship is known for its masculinized culture, which is infused with hegemonic entrepreneurial masculinity (Ahl, 2006; Hytti and Heinonen, 2013; Hytti et al., 2023). Research in gender and entrepreneurship has increased over the years, building a strong foundation for research agendas and motivating scholars to explore this stream of research. Entrepreneurship scholars have vouched for more research tackling gender issues in entrepreneurship from the feminist theoretical perspective (e.g. Marlow, 2020). Notably, instead of treating gender as a variable, gender studies in entrepreneurship have applied feminist theory as a medium to express the embeddedness of gender in the daily lives of entrepreneurs and among entrepreneurial activities (Ahl, 2006).

Additionally, feminist theories are represented in gender studies in entrepreneurship mainly as a conceptual resource to address a specific topic, as an empirical category associated with the specific types of study of organizing practice, but rarely as a methodology (Bell et al., 2020). From a methodological perspective, feminist theories have been used as an overarching theory, informing the research design. A wide range of qualitative methodologies and analysis methods, such as interviews, observation and ethnography, have been applied to study gender issues in entrepreneurship. While reflexivity is encouraged (Calás and Smircich, 2006; Calás et al., 2009), and there are calls for different approaches to study entrepreneurs (e.g. Dimov et al., 2021), autoethnography studies are still nascent in entrepreneurship research. Overall, research in gender and entrepreneurship is inspired by feminist theories, yet there is a lack of works that adopt a feminist theoretical lens as a methodology to express the researcher’s positioning.

In relation to entrepreneurial pitching, pitching and gender is a growing research stream, mainly focusing on how entrepreneurs present the pitch and what they can do to construct their pitch to attract the audience, especially the investors. Similar to gender and entrepreneurship research, gender and pitching studies focus on entrepreneurs and what entrepreneurs (both men and women) use language to enhance the impression of the pitch (e.g. Brooks et al., 2014; Balachandra et al., 2021; Komulainen et al., 2020; McSweeney et al., 2022). Furthermore, entrepreneurial pitching and gender research focus on the relationship between investors and entrepreneurs, leaving behind the roles and perspectives of other actors that engage in the process of making and presenting the pitch, especially the researchers who interact with entrepreneurial actors and entrepreneurial activities in everyday life. This study highlights the embeddedness of gender in entrepreneurial activities, and actors who are directly or indirectly involved in these activities can be exposed by using autoethnography, expressing the researcher’s voice toward norms and structures in entrepreneurship.

Affect addresses the emotional experience formed and gained by an engagement with both human and non-human agents through a collective form of body experiences (Blackman and Venn, 2010). An affective experience is expressed through “non-conscious, not-yet conscious capacities of bodies to affect or are affected by the experiences the bodies go through” (Gherardi, 2017, p 348). In this perspective, affect transcends narratives, subjective meaning and emotional expressions. Moreover, affect is relational and processual (Gherardi, 2017), meaning “affective activity is an ongoing flow” (Wetherell, 2015, p. 147).

Affective experience appreciates subjective, individual emotions emerging from one’s embodied experience when immersing in an environment and interacting with human and non-human subjects (Koivunen, 2010). Rather than seeing the experiences as individual endeavors, affect theory emphasizes the shared understanding of practices that shape and reinforce gender norms and power structures (Koivunen, 2010).

Affect theory is thus useful for analyzing how emotions and social interactions shape the entrepreneurial environment. Specifically, I consider the time I spent in the pitch training sessions, becoming familiar with the entrepreneurial environment, as an affective experience. During this time, I was continuously reflexive in how entrepreneurial hegemonic masculinity practices, such as being confident, risk-taking and aggressive, merged with entrepreneurial actors’ pitching practices. Eventually, through rehearsing the pitch, entrepreneurial actors (i.e. entrepreneurs, pitching coaches and accelerator program organizers) acknowledge and maintain entrepreneurial hegemonic masculinity. As a participant observer, I was affectively affected, and at the same time, sustained this form of entrepreneurial hegemonic masculinity.

In this paper, Ahmed (2019) defines “use” as a way “of being in touch with things”, meaning that someone employs and habituates something for a certain purpose. “Use” connects the threads to create a relationship between different concepts, and it can be understood as “a way of being in touch with things. We learn from past experiences about what to use for what. Use gives us a sense of things: how they are; what they are like” (Ahmed, p. 21).

To use something, first, we often follow the instructions on how to use, what can be used and who can use that thing. As we rely on instructions for “use”, not following the instructions could be deemed as obstruction (Ahmed, 2019), and the path that is not being instructed could be viewed as the wrong one. Second, when we use something, we transform its form and purpose to accommodate what we are trying to achieve (Ahmed, 2019). Third, once something has been used accordingly to the instructions and it has been transformed to align with our purposes, we encourage not only ourselves but others to adhere to the same path that has been repetitively used.

“Ease” is the outcome of conformity to the useful passages that are accepted by others. Once something has become used, you are encouraged to go in that direction, because your progression would be eased. As such, “the more a path is used, the more a path is used.” (Ahmed, 2019, p. 40). The well-used path provides a pictorial route, and gradually, over time, a path becomes easier, meaning the effort required is lessened. In other words, a used path provides directions and eases our way, inviting us to conform to it. At the same time, the easy-to-use path blinds our consciousness to what shapes this path and how much we adhere to the instructions to make use of something and follow the used paths. In essence, “ease” is the outcome of “use” and the “used path”.

Many examples about “to use” and “use” relate to objects, but the concept can also be applied to processes, practices, language and behaviors we engage in daily basis, both professionally and personally. “Use” can describe how words and behaviors are built and become available or ready for people to employ. From this perspective, “ease” is often associated with a seamless fit with the norms and orders that establish the “use”. For those who deviate from expected norms, achieving a sense of ease might be more challenging.

Accelerator programs are designed to support early-stage ventures and have gained popularity in recent years, as part of an important achievement for start-ups. Specifically, pitch training is an essential element of accelerator programs. Pitch training is organized routinely throughout the accelerator programs, led by a pitch training coach and representatives of start-up organizations. Pitch training coaches are usually individuals who have experience working and engaging in entrepreneurship, such as seasoned entrepreneurs, investors, venture capital investment employees and partners. The data of this study were collected at pitch training sessions. Additionally, the data were collected in around six months – three months in the summer of 2021 and three months in the summer of 2022.

In this paper, I follow the evocative autoethnography approach, which understands autoethnographic materials as “narrative presentations that open up conversations and evoke emotional responses” (Ellingson and Ellis, 2008, p. 445). In evocative ethnography, subjective affective experiences and emotions are a crucial medium to evoke resonance with the readers and raise awareness about hidden phenomena, such as vulnerable experiences, unequal treatment resulting from social and cultural norms (Allen and Piercy, 2005; Bochner and Ellis, 2002). Stories and storytelling are modes of communication in evocative autoethnography to help the reader “to feel the feelings of the other” (Denzin, 1997, p. 228). In relation to this, the study is inspired by the idea of writing as a way to convey affect (Gilmore et al., 2019).

Autoethnography unfolds the interactions between the research context (e.g. people, materials, space) and the researchers, enabling researchers to provide in-depth descriptions about social phenomena in connection with personal narrative and reflexive analysis. The researchers’ engagement with reflexivity enables the production of new perspectives, for example, toward the understanding and emotional expression of a certain practice. In this sense, writing is an agency that highlights the embodied engagements of the authors. Beyond writing (Bell et al., 2020) can be understood as employing creative ways of writing, especially in academia, to express the authors’ absorption of literature through personal experience. This writing style is rooted in the claim that by writing differently, we shape new knowledge and challenge gendered practices and structures (Phillips et al., 2014). In essence, writing is the way to formulate the emotions, subconscious thoughts and the experience that one wants to convey (Katila, 2019).

The data collection process started in early 2021. I contacted and discussed with different accelerator programs for early-stage ventures in Finland. After a couple of months, around April 2021, I received a positive reply from one place that organizes an annual summer accelerator program. I would be able to attend their pitch training sessions and participate as an observer. In summer 2021, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, I collected the observation vignettes online via Zoom. In summer 2022, I returned to collect more data, and this time, I would be attending pitch training sessions physically. A consent agreement was made with the accelerator program organizers, with the condition that the sessions were not recorded and the personal information about the ventures and the entrepreneurial teams, such as the name and the business idea of the venture, would not be revealed. Table 1 summarizes the details of the observation notes.

The notes were written before, during and after each pitch training session. Specifically, before each session, I wrote down my plan, my expectations for the session and my feelings up to that point. Figure 1 provides a snapshot of the notes taken before, during and after pitch training on July 7, 2022. Before each session, I wrote about what to observe, initial impressions and my emotions about going to the field and about previous sessions. Then, during the training, each entrepreneur or representative of the venture presented the pitch, followed by feedback and comments by the coaches, the accelerator program’s representatives and the audience. Each pitch training session lasted around two to three hours. As an observant participant, I was sitting in the same space with everyone, but I did not fully engage in the conversations and discussions. I took essential notes related to the pitch, such as the content, the structure and the linguistic style. However, for the feedback from the coaches, the notes were more accurate and closer to verbatim notes. After each session, I summarized the events, notable aspects and my feelings about them (Figure 1).

The analysis process was divided into two periods. The first analysis period of the vignettes started right after I collected data in 2022, following narrative analysis (Riessman, 2008). The initial analysis focused on the “Before the session” and “After the session” vignettes, because they included more personal reflections about my interactions with the studied context. Nonetheless, while the analysis revealed the iterative flow of feeling uneasy to feeling at ease, or being an outsider and an insider, it lacked a coherent structure. The author attended a paper development workshop in 2023, and this point was raised by the audience. The reason was that the “During the session” vignettes were missing, which has a significant role in helping the audience navigate the stories and the patterns.

After one year, I picked up the data again and restarted the analysis. The second analysis period was an iterative three-stage process. Figure 2 illustrates the analysis process. First, before applying narrative analysis to construct stories, I consulted memory work (Haug, 1985) to regain my reflexive affect during the data collection period. Memory-work is a feminist social constructionist method that guides the process of collecting and restructuring in relation to theories (Haug, 1985; Kuhn, 2010; Onyx and Small, 2001). Memory-work method includes three phases (Onyx and Small, 2001). Phase 1 is to reconstruct a memory by writing about a particular episode in as much detail as possible. In practice, I wrote down my memories about each training session (1-2 pages for each session I attended). Moreover, as I took some photos during the data collection period, I used the photographs to re-enact the memories by looking at how the photographs showcase the events through the eyes of the researcher. Then, in Phase 2, the aim is to identify similarities and differences between the memories and the fieldnotes (Crawford, 1992; Onyx and Small, 2001). In detail, I compared the vignettes produced at the scene to select the moments that were highlighted in both the original vignettes and in the memory writing pages. Memory-work helped me to reconstruct the stories, emotions and experiences of the data collection period, helping to identify the selection of the vignettes and evoking emotional resonance during the analysis of the fieldnotes.

In the second stage of the analysis, coupled with memory-work, I organized the selected vignettes into a timeline to construct narratives (Riessman, 2008). In this stage, I realized the patterns of the narratives, which showed that there were some changes in how I interacted with others and how I perceived pitching practices. This analysis approach helped me to find my positioning, and I could zoom in details of the happenings, and at the same time, zoom out from personal emotions. In detail, I organized the vignettes into these categories: what happened, who the actors were and how I felt at the moment. This step helped me to have an overview of the experiences and observe emerging patterns. After that, as I went back and forth reviewing the stories and letting my emotions resurface, I recognized the interplay between feelings of ease and unease throughout the time I was in the field.

In the third stage, aligning with Phase 3 of memory-work method, which aims to connect the reconstructed memories with theories, I applied Ahmed’s “use” theoretical concept (2019), focusing on moments that I felt uneasy and easy. I organized the emotions of uneasiness and easiness according to the temporal changes throughout my journey participating and engaging with the pitch training sessions. Additionally, for each moment, I looked into what contributed to those emotions, such as short notes depicting my feelings, or previous experiences (e.g. “perhaps I have been here before, the atmosphere is not as tense as I felt” – Note on 18.07.2022). As a result, three narratives describe the story of a junior female researcher going through the path toward ease and breaking the ease: in the midst of feeling uneasy, finding ease by following the used paths, and will I ever be at ease?

Overall, the process of making sense of the data was indeed challenging. As mentioned, I decided to stop analyzing the data, as I could not find the balance between my personal perspective and the rigor of the research. To ensure the transparency and the methodological rigor of the research, I presented the research idea and the preliminary findings in a few workshops and conferences, receiving feedback from scholars to improve the theoretical framing and contributions of this work. Also, after analyzing the data again using Ahmed’s concept of “use”, I shared the draft with colleagues – including people who were familiar with feminist theories (two researchers) and those who were not familiar with this type of study (five researchers). I asked for their opinions about making an autoethnography work, the findings and any feedback to improve the paper. While the process of making sense of the qualitative data was lengthy, it was necessary for the author to become more familiar with the breadth of the “beyond writing” research, which emphasizes and embraces the researchers’ personal experiences (Bell et al., 2020). This helps me to understand this study’s values in zooming into the fluidity and the challenges of the insider-outsider role, and the reflexivity of the researcher is present throughout the research process, meaning reflexivity does not only happen when we analyze data but also when we design, collect, organize and report the results.

Before these visits, the dominance of entrepreneurial masculinity was still far from my daily life. I read and captured some knowledge through reading and watching online pitching sessions. The realization of how strong masculinity is in entrepreneurship was echoed when my presence was embedded in the physical space where the pitch happens. One of the first moments I felt uneasy was when I heard feedback from a coach to a founder who had volunteered to pitch first: “You’re better off showing something a bit crap and getting your ass kicked than having your ass kicked for not putting the effort in now. Good job on jumping up first and getting the largest amount of feedback. Whoever goes last will get the least.” (Ethnographic notes taken on 22.7.2021).

The quote hints that entrepreneurial feedback can be harsh and tough, and this has become a norm that is shared among entrepreneurial actors. This pattern was notable in my notes from the summer of 2022, when I returned to collect more data in physical pitch training sessions:

This vignette highlights the power dynamics and pressure within entrepreneurial pitch sessions. When a founder exceeded the pitch time limit, an organizer interrupted with a remark that downplayed the position of nascent founders and emphasized the coach’s authority. Feeling uneasy about the power dynamics that happened at the session, I remembered shaking my head and thinking: “Am I in a class and there is a terrifying teacher? Luckily, I’m not one of the founders. I would feel very small.”(Ethnographic notes taken on 15.08.2021).

Based on my previous experience, people often understood gender research as primarily studying women, so participants might have been puzzled by my topic. When I introduced my research topic that concerns gender issues in entrepreneurship to the people in the accelerator program, they naturally discussed the number of women compared to men.

On various occasions when I talked to people, I recalled them emphasizing that they were seeing more women entrepreneurs, which is a good sign that gender equality is on the agenda and that entrepreneurship is welcomed by everyone. E1 (Entrepreneur 1) told me that he envisioned a future with “programs exclusively for female founders and female investors, preparing them for the reality out there”. The “reality” E1 meant was the hustle culture of entrepreneurship, the importance of “willing to be humiliated” (E2), and the understanding that there are more male investors and thus, they entail certain biases and preferences. During this entire time, the thought at the top of my mind was:

Being new to the setting and being a participant observer, my affective journey with entrepreneurial actors and pitching started off with various occasions of feeling uneasy. I observed the mutual acknowledgement of entrepreneurial gendered structure among the actors and the use of harsh language, illustrated by curse words, sarcastic remarks and belittling comments from pitching coaches – individuals with more experience whose job was to provide guidance for nascent entrepreneurs.

The pitch training sessions were organized in an open space dedicated to the city’s entrepreneurship hub. Revisiting the vignettes, I realized that after the first few sessions, my writing focused not only on what happened and my reflexive thoughts but also on my interactions with people around me while I was there. There were two situations in particular where I found that speaking up assertively somehow made me more accepted and my voice heard.

This vignette reflects the challenges of asserting myself in fast-paced, male-dominated entrepreneurial environments. Wanting to be included, I recalled advice from a female founder about the need to be bold, self-invite and finally decided to speak up. This interaction illustrates how individuals must often push themselves to be heard and highlights the importance of assertiveness in entrepreneurship. Interestingly, after this, I felt more at ease approaching and, at times, interrupting people to include myself in conversations. Three weeks later, before another pitch training, I arrived I was using the space more comfortably and naturally, as if I were part of the team of people who frequently utilized the rooms, kitchen and tools. The vignette below further illustrates how I asserted myself in an entrepreneurial setting, where being proactive and drawing attention is necessary:

Using the “used path” – the need to be initiative and approach people immediately when being in an entrepreneurial-related environment – encouraged me to follow the same path again. And I achieved my goal again, which was transforming the conversations with people involved in the pitch training into one-on-one meetings where I could collect qualitative interview data. The process of getting myself accustomed to the dominant practices, norms and language people used made me more comfortable modifying my own “saying and doing” to make myself heard and noticed. Eventually, I felt more at ease with the environment and the patterns of behavior around me. The transformation from feeling uneasy to getting familiar with the uneasiness reflects the transition of the author’s role from being an outsider to being an insider-outsider, featuring the flexibility between positioning and reflexive negotiations of qualitative researchers (Dwyer and Buckle, 2009).

Looking back, I was initially awkward and overwhelmed by the space and the fast-paced environment. I did not know where to sit because I felt I had nowhere to hide to read and write my notes. After a month, I felt it was nice that the place was open without too many corners, because it gave a free, relaxing vibe that welcomed everyone. Whenever I opened up the fieldnotes, I experienced how I absorbed in the environment and its practices, became familiar with them, and stopped noticing my uneasiness. Particularly, at the end of the fourth session, there was a social gathering barbecue, and I was invited to join. I eagerly agreed, thinking it would be a nice occasion to talk to more people. While waiting for the barbecue, people around me were quietly talking to their teams, checking their phones or working on their laptops. “It feels like the first day I was here, it feels awkward”, I thought. Despite being awkward, I realized I was at ease with it and with the people around me, even when they were not talking to me.

As I noted, I described myself as a “half insider–half outsider”, illustrating that I felt both included and detached simultaneously. Initially, I felt like an outsider and was nervous about interacting with people in this environment (i.e. entrepreneurs, coaches, organizers). Toward the end of the accelerator program, I evolved to embrace my positioning, getting used to the awkwardness and the fast-paced entrepreneurial environment. The growth into comfort, to me, reflects how “use” is shaped and reinforced by affective experiences. In my case, the integration between comfort and detachment created a unique affective experience regarding the entrepreneurial environment and the people who engaged in entrepreneurship. At the Demo Day, I was very happy for the teams and the founders because I had witnessed their effort over nearly three months. I talked to people about their pitches, I encouraged them before their presentations and congratulated them afterward. The event was a fun, supportive and festive day, ending with an after-party.

There was indeed a sense of familiarity. I had moved beyond the initial uneasiness to be more at ease with entrepreneurial ways of doing things. As Ahmed (2019) explains, the more attuned we are to the well-worn path, the more our progression is eased. Following the well-used path, I found and embraced my “half-insider-half-outsider” positioning, eventually gaining recognition, as the message “You’re always welcome here” suggests.

As my notes show, I was both happy with my progress and relieved that this part of the journey was completed. Half a year later, looking back at the reflexive notes depicting my emotions and self-negotiations between following the well-worn path and the resistance within myself, I saw a conflict. On the one hand, I agreed to accept and do what has been dominated and reinforced by entrepreneurial actors, such as talking louder, being more aggressive with my approach, interrupting people and networking continuously. On the other hand, throughout the whole journey, there were moments when I thought that it was fortunate that I was not fully immersed in this environment: “It’s good that I’m not there, being whole-heartedly present something I truly believe, showing my vulnerable side, and being criticized for literally everything.” (Ethnographic notes taken 30.07.2022).

Also, as a person studying and researching performative acts of gender in entrepreneurship, I wondered if my work would actually hold any meaning for the people I had spoken with over the past months. I was unsure about whether this research would meet others’ expectations or have any impact beyond academia.

The nascent entrepreneurs entered this field with excitement about their products/services and the hope that positive results would come after their continuous effort. It was the thrill of creating something new and being acknowledged for it that drove them through the risky journey to be entrepreneurs. Similar to them, I joined this field to study it, collecting data so that 1 day my work could be published and found useful by people in academia and beyond academia. The excitement clashes with the continued uneasiness of being in an environment where entrepreneurial hegemonic masculinity is dominant and accepted. While I became more at ease with entrepreneurial masculinity, I struggled to feel completely at ease within this well-worn path, eventually distancing myself from the common ways people talk and do things.

Overall, the personal experiences and reflexivity helped me to be more “in touch” with gendering entrepreneurship (Calás et al., 2009). When I reviewed the memories and the data from the perspective of a gender researcher, it became clear that everyone was accustomed to the ideal entrepreneur, who is described as overly confident and showing competence in an aggressive way. Reflexively, as the responsible person to collect data, I was engaged and, to some extent, accepted gendered norms in entrepreneurship to achieve my goals – getting to get to know people and collecting qualitative data. This reflects what Ahmed (2019) describes as the “well-worn path”. Even though I was aware of this dominance, over time, these practices became so frequent that they came to be seen as natural or inevitable, taken-for-granted by me and those around me in that accelerator space.

This paper reflects on the self-learning process of trying to “be at ease” and “live with” entrepreneurial masculinities (Chatzidakis et al., 2020), alongside the continuous struggle to fit into the entrepreneurship scene being a female junior researcher. Through reflexive contemplation of the fieldnotes, this paper shows that entrepreneurial masculinity, particularly the perpetuation of masculine behaviors (e.g. assertiveness, competitiveness, harsh critique) as the well-used path (Ahmed, 2019) that has been “used” over time, becomes deeply embedded in entrepreneurial culture. For example, the harsh feedback in pitch training, valorizing risk-taking and initiative, illustrates this norm of entrepreneurship.

The paper provides important insights into how the gendered nature of entrepreneurship is perpetuated through pitch training and how this setting affects the experience of the researchers who experience a sense of unease when studying gender in entrepreneurship or when talking to practitioners about gender. Specifically, the study shows that a feminist theoretical approach can be integrated with entrepreneurship literature, especially with the current transformation toward getting first-hand experience in the entrepreneurship environment to heighten reflexivity in entrepreneurship research. As feminist theories and reflexivity are still scattered, especially in relation to methodology in entrepreneurship research, the study showcases how autoethnography can be one medium to foster the application of feminist theories in entrepreneurship, telling the audience the researchers’ experiences when making studies with somewhat sensitive, yet important, topics, such as gender and inclusivity.

In specific, not only did I get used to the practices of the well-worn path, but I was also dependent on this path to move forward with my research. I mimicked acting like a confident, energetic and fast-paced person, blending in with the environment I was studying and creating better engagement with entrepreneurial actors. The affective feeling I developed toward entrepreneurship was complex – something that was both familiar but distant, exciting but “not for me”, something to which I was half-belonging but also half-detached. Despite this complexity, I was aware that following this path would be easier; thus, I used the created path to get accustomed to entrepreneurial practices. I did not criticize or raise my voice against the norms because I accepted that certain gendered norms and behaviors are considered part of the nature of entrepreneurship, and I felt I was not there to “change the game”. While the role of the researcher and the insider–outsider role have been explored in autoethnographic studies (e.g. Bruskin, 2019), this study unfolds continuous tensions between being an insider and an outsider, which have not been directly addressed in previous studies.

Resistance to the “use” of gendered norms in entrepreneurship emerged when I observed others and reflected on my journey, aligning with Ahmed’s (2019) idea that we often only seek change when something is broken. The discomfort experienced when encountering and following the path of reinforcing entrepreneurial masculinity was constructed through repeated use and reflection. My hesitations or feelings of being “out of place” were moments where these norms were disrupted, even if only temporarily within my own consciousness. Moreover, the resistance is expressed in my academic work concerning the co-construction and co-performance of gender in entrepreneurial pitching. Creating new ways of use and new paths can inspire changes (Ahmed, 2019). While my reflexivity expressed in this paper cannot single-handedly reshape how entrepreneurship is identified and viewed, it could act as a call for a redefinition of entrepreneurial success to include collaborative, empathetic and relational practices, rather than solely focusing on risk, assertiveness and competition.

The purpose of the present study is to elaborate on the tensions in relation to the research context that junior scholars interact with, ranging from getting used to the practices, accepting the used path and critically questioning the researcher’s positioning. The study amplifies the argument that entrepreneurship is a masculine domain, forcing entrepreneurial actors to conform to expected behaviors, practices and language. The findings have showcased the researcher’s affective journey from being an outsider, feeling uneasy with masculine practices in relation to pitching, to getting used to the taken-for-granted norms and juggling between the insider and outsider roles. Besides following the call for more research where researchers participate in entrepreneurial activities, I also want to illustrate the boundaries that I, as a female doctoral student, faced in the early career phase.

The writing in this paper touches upon a more personal, sensitive aspect of my short yet intensive journey of collecting ethnographic data for my doctoral research project. Through exploring the path toward ease and the subsequent breaking of the ease, I contemplated my journey, where I found myself not resisting entrepreneurial masculinity practices but adopting and mimicking them. I felt both at ease and uneasy about reinforcing certain masculine ways of doing and saying things. While this paper is based on the author’s affective experience and subjective emotions, it offers several theoretical contributions and potential societal implications for the entrepreneurial ecosystem. First, this study contributes to gender and entrepreneurship research by demonstrating how affective and embodied experiences shape women’s participation in business. The study underscores the gendered nature of entrepreneurship, where masculine ways of “saying and doing” are often taken-for-granted. This echoes research showing the challenges women face and navigate in the entrepreneurial environment. Thus, the study joins the call for more research exploring how gender is embedded in entrepreneurship and the ways gendered practices and norms interact with entrepreneurial actors. Through autoethnography, the study extends our understanding of how gendered norms are perpetuated and resisted, emphasizing that everyone who engages and is involved in the process of making the pitch reinforces gendered norms. Entrepreneurship research would benefit from a more critical perspective incorporating post-structural feminist theory to explore the gendered nature of entrepreneurship and potentially evoke institutional reshaping (Marlow, 2020).

Second, through autoethnography, the study brings forward voices and emotions that traditional research often overlooks, offering a more nuanced view of gendered barriers. Specifically, autoethnographic materials allowed me to engage directly with entrepreneurs and absorb myself in their environment rather than merely analyzing entrepreneurs from a distance. This paper follows the second-person perspective by engaging directly with entrepreneurs and immersing myself in their environment (Dimov et al., 2021). By gaining deep insights from entrepreneurial actors, I was able not only to observe their behaviors but also to reflect on my journey interacting with them. Consequently, this paper showcases autoethnography as an agency for reviving affective experience, contributing to the use of feminist methodology in entrepreneurship research. Moreover, the study argues for more efforts to explore entrepreneurial actors’ experience and as a medium to make the researcher’s reflexive voice heard.

This study makes important societal contributions by exposing the gendered dynamics within entrepreneurial ecosystems in Finland. By highlighting how pitching norms and structures may disadvantage women, the study brings attention to the systemic barriers women entrepreneurs face. Although exploratory, the findings can inform public discourse and serve as a foundation for future policy initiatives aimed at creating more inclusive and equitable support structures. In doing so, the study encourages societal reflection on how entrepreneurship can be made more accessible to underrepresented groups.

This study does contain some limitations. First, the data were collected within a single accelerator program, which may not fully capture the broader norms and structures of entrepreneurial pitching across different contexts. A more longitudinal and comparative approach would be necessary to draw more generalizable conclusions. Second, while the study sheds light on the gendered nature of entrepreneurship in Finland, it lacks evidence to propose concrete policy changes. Therefore, future studies could consider adopting various methodologies, such as experimental methods, mixed-methods and a participatory approach, to provide insights and together build collective knowledge for informing policy and practice changes in the future.