Monthly Archives: October 2015

Gender Equality in Entrepreneurship Policy: Looking to the Future

Leave a reply

This post was contributed by members of the Transforming Institutions by Gendering contents and Gaining Equality in Research (TRIGGER) team – a research project in Birkbeck’s Department of Management – following a workshop which they led at Dundalk Institute of Technology, Dundalk, Ireland on Thursday, October 22

Women at conference (pic credit: Ignite New Zealand under CC via Flickr.com)

Women at conference (pic credit: Ignite New Zealand under CC via Flickr.com)

The international panel at Dundalk Institute of Technology (DKIT), Ireland, was asked to reflect on the differences in the challenges that women entrepreneurs face compared to their male counterparts. Their responses would then shape their views as to whether the panel thought that different policies are needed to support them.

Professor Colette Henry, a member of the TRIGGER team and Head of Department of Business at DKIT introduced the panel. Professor Helen Lawton Smith – as the Birkbeck lead of the TRIGGER project – chaired the session, and began by asking the panellists to share their own perspectives and experiences of women’s enterprise policy. The panel brought together perspectives from both research and practice.

The panellists were:

  • Ms Sarita Johnston, Enterprise Ireland
  • Professor Barbara Orser, University of Ottawa, Canada
  • Professor Bill O’Gorman, Waterford Institute of Technology, Ireland
  • Professor Lene Foss, UiT – The Arctic University of Norway
  • Ms Roseann Kelly, Women in Business Northern Ireland

Structural and contextual challenges

In response to the question of the different challenges faced by men and women entrepreneurs, Lene Foss suggested that women face both structural and contextual challenges. Roseann Kelly identified these as a difference in the kinds of networks they have as well as the existence of fewer role models. Lene Foss further highlighted the dual role that women play as both mothers and entrepreneurs, as well as national differences in women’s propensity to become entrepreneurs. In Norway for example, immigrant women are more likely to be entrepreneurs than Norwegian women.

On the question of whether support for improved networking opportunities for women was an appropriate policy response, Bill O’Gorman cited his recent experiences of women’s attitudes towards women-only networks. He gave an example from his own work where his team at Waterford had set up three networks in Ireland and Wales: male only, mixed and female only. Surprisingly, while women initially were reluctant to join women only-networks because they realised that gender diversity is important and a women-only network would segregate them from men, the women-only network appeared to perform best. While the other two networks folded, the women-only one continued and still exists.

Sarita Johnson, Manager of Female Entrepreneurship for Enterprise Ireland, cited research that has led to Enterprise Ireland to support women-only programmes including networks. This demonstrated that the challenges facing women entrepreneurs are different, specifically with regard to attitude towards risk-taking and raising finance. For example, Enterprise Ireland invests in 100 high potential start-ups (HPSUs) per year. The specific targeting of women has meant that the number of women entrepreneurs in this category being awarded grants has risen from 7% to 18%. She also found that women-only networks tend to perform best – for example, in raising export sales.

Need for better understanding of gender differences

Dundalk Institute of Technology (pic credit banlon1964 under CC via Flickr.com)

Dundalk Institute of Technology (pic credit banlon1964 under CC via Flickr.com)

Barbara Orser highlighted that it is not just social capital that contributes to women only-networks performing better – it is also technology adoption and financial capital. There needs to be better understanding of gender differences, for example, with regard to levels of confidence, in order to develop better policy. Three aspects were identified as important: women’s social circles; social capital in the form of information gathering networks, and fear of failure.

Roseann Kelly suggested that women are sometimes reluctant to benefit from women-only initiatives and prefer not to be labelled as ‘women entrepreneurs.’ This is a marketing issue – exemplar women are there by right and should celebrate their success. They should play by their own rules and not those set by men. Moreover, women should not have the equivalent of ‘old boys’ networks, because women are better at inclusivity than men.

When the Panel were asked how a hypothetical one million euros might be best spent to support women’s entrepreneurship, Sarita Johnston from Enterprise Ireland said that a programme which would give financial support to women entrepreneurs would offer the quickest and most tangible benefits. Blended support in the form of networking, accelerator programmes and role models is the best approach for supporting start-ups. Access to capital pulls through the development of other skills. Bill O’Gorman thought the money being spent on Ireland’s action plan for jobs is effective, and an emphasis on female entrepreneurship would yield benefits.

Roseann Kelly pointed out that Women in Business Northern Ireland has no public funding for enterprise support and has to be self-sustaining. Public funding would give a boost to their programmes. Barbara Orser suggested that public monies in Canada could be spent on encouraging more women to become entrepreneurs. A specific population that might benefit from funding is women university students; these are under-represented in Ireland’s women entrepreneurs.

Impacting on the entrepreneurial culture

The challenge for the TRIGGER team at Birkbeck is to build on the insights gained from academics’ and practitioners’ experiences to make an impact on the entrepreneurial culture within the college. This means encouraging more female students, as well as professional and academic staff, to share the lessons of the differences in challenges they face with other communities. This panel event shows that there is much to be gained by sharing perspectives from within different institutional and national contexts.

Find out more

Exploring the mind-body problem: An evening with Siri Hustvedt

Leave a reply

This post was contributed by Andrew Youngson, media and publicity officer for Birkbeck, University of London

“The truth is that people don’t agree on the mind. Confusion reigns. Scientists, philosophers and scholars frequently clash,” explained Siri Hustvedt to a gathered audience at Woburn House on Friday 23 October.

The American essayist, novelist and poet was in London to attend a daytime conference exploring academic responses to her work on her work hosted by Birkbeck’s Centre for Contemporary Literature. The event, which borrowed its name from Hustvedt’s 2012 collection of essays Living, Thinking, Looking was coordinated by Birkbeck English and Humanities PhD student, Alex Williamson, whose thesis examines the writing of Hustvedt and her husband, Paul Auster.

Siri Hustvedt (photo courtesy of Annabel-Clark-www.annabelclark.net)

Siri Hustvedt (photo courtesy of Annabel-Clark-www.annabelclark.net)

This particular event, however, was the associated evening seminar,– a public reading and open Q&A, comprising part of the Bloomsbury Festival, in which Hustvedt was tasked with laying out her thoughts on the ‘mind-body problem’.

Are the brain and mind different? What is the distinction between the mental and the physical? Such questions have fuelled the overarching mind-body debate which has been battered about for centuries within and between various spheres of academic pursuit. A debate, said Hustvedt, which is far from over.

“The unsolved problems of the mind and body are treated by the media, philosophers and science like they are behind us. But often the underlying assumptions are hidden. Much remains unknown about the mind and its relation to the world,” she continued.

This broad topic of discussion offered an illuminating window into Hustvedt’s portfolio of work, which for nearly four decades has spanned the realms of academia, art, fiction and non-fiction.

The Delusions of Certainty

(L-R) Siri Hustvedt and Dr Johanna Hartmann (pic: Dominic Mifsud, Birkbeck Media Services 2015)

(L-R) Siri Hustvedt and Dr Johanna Hartmann (pic: Dominic Mifsud, Birkbeck Media Services 2015)

The evening began with a reading from Hustvedt – an extract from her forthcoming 200-page essay, The Delusions of Certainty, in which she analyses the concepts of ‘the self’ and ‘consciousness’ and how they have been interpreted through the ages.

Philosophical luminaries including Alfred North Whitehead, Giambattista Vico, Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Rene Descartes and Thomas Hobbes have all been influential in how we view the mind-body divide, Hustvedt noted. However, grand theories which have been created by such thinkers — constructivist, dualist and absolutist as many are – often serve to stultify and stymie the opportunity for further debate.

“Part of the problem is that of expertise,” she said. “My issue is with knowledge that presents itself as a finished theory. That is pernicious.”

A pluralist by nature, Hustvedt made her case for being sceptical of “truisms”, “asking questions” rather than rushing to answer them, and “acknowledging the limitations” of our own knowledge. The world-renowned writer’s thoughts came to the fore in her reading and the Q&A sessions which followed – initially an on-stage interview with Dr Johanna Hartmann, a contributor to the collection of academic responses to Hustvedt’s work, Zones of Focused Ambiguity in Siri Hustvedt’s Work; and secondly in an open Q&A session with the audience.

The topics touched upon during the evening were wide ranging:

  • the reductionist ‘Computational’ and ‘Hardwired’ models of the brain: “They should be put to bed forever,” Hustvedt remarked
  • the underlying misogyny in theories of artificial intelligence: “It’s about hopping over women entirely”
  • the value of Eastern medicine and philosophies: “As a pluralist, I try to read as much as I can, and to see how they can work together”
  • the production of art: “All art is a relational reality”
  • her ease in writing about a mysterious series of seizures she experienced earlier in her life: “I didn’t consider it a moral failing or something that was shameful. When I was over it, I just thought ‘this is really interesting, I could use it in my writing’”

A connection to something out there

In many cases, it was in raising her own questions, rather than making assertions, that Hustvedt’s core take-home message was laid bare.

Siri Hustvedt at the Birkbeck evening event (pic: Dominic Mifsud, Birkbeck Media Services 2015)

Siri Hustvedt at the Birkbeck evening event (pic: Dominic Mifsud, Birkbeck Media Services 2015)

“It’s fascinating, because it asks questions like, ‘can the endochrine system think?’”, she said in response to an audience member’s question about the phenomenon of false pregnancy. “Now, I don’t know the answer, but I think it’s good to ask the question.”

This approach to knowledge and truth lies at the heart of her essay, The Delusions of Certainty, and indeed her writing in general. Hustvedt rallies against the forced certainties of dominant discourses. The arrogance of such “wrapped up” scientific writing as Steven Pinker’s How the Mind Works – the very publication which inspired Hustvedt to write her essay in the first place ­– distort debate.

That said, this doesn’t lessen her passion for the pursuit of knowledge, and the value of science.

“My aim here isn’t to ‘diss’ science,” she concluded. “It’s very important to assert something which is true. We’re all the beneficiaries of the models used in science that have power over the material world, such as antibiotics. But does it mean that the model is perfect? No, it just means it has some connection to something that’s out there.”

Hear Siri’s interview on the Birkbeck Voices podcast on iTunes or the Soundcloud link below.

Find out more

The Same-Sex Couple and the State

Leave a reply

This post was contributed by Naomi Smith, Birkbeck graduate and current intern in External Relations. Naomi recently attended a Birkbeck public lecture hosted by Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, featuring Professor Robert Aldrich of the University of Sydney

Image copyright torbakhopper (Flickr)

Image copyright torbakhopper (Flickr)

Using French history as a case study, Professor Robert Aldrich’s lecture explored the relatively recent global shift from sodomy laws to the embrace of same-sex marriage.

As the title of the lecture suggests, Professor Aldrich chose to look at sodomy laws from a historical and transnational perspective. Having trained as a historian of France, he is now a Professor of European History at the University of Sydney, although his work spans a much more global remit than this suggests.

Aldrich began by observing that ‘the movement for marriage equality has gone global’.

Next, he suggested that whilst the State often acts as an agent of oppression, it is also, at least in potential, an agent of emancipation. He noted that this is particularly obvious when the State manages to free itself of ‘certain notions of nature and sexuality that have much to do with traditional religious beliefs’; this generally involves a challenge to the state by sexual, legal and constitutional activists.

The cause of reform in attitudes

Aldrich proposed that two major changes or contexts could be identified as the cause of reform in attitudes, both social and legal, to marriage equality. Firstly, the belief in the State as the guarantor of rights, rather than the agent that denies rights. And secondly, the concept of governance that distances the State from the dictates of traditional or orthodox religious beliefs, whatever they may be.

We are only now beginning to combat what Monique Wittig called the ‘homosexual contract’, paraphrasing Rousseau’s notion of the ‘social contract’. She meant the profoundly embedded supposition that normality is relationships between a man and a woman with the intention of procreation.

Movement towards marriage equality has historically made us think about what marriage is, a notion that varies greatly from place to place, from culture to culture, from religion to religion. This includes notions of consent, ages of consent and the legality of divorce – Aldrich talked about campaigns throughout history to combat these notions and instigate legal change.

Homophobia

He feels that what is in opposition to the legalisation of same-sex marriage is not ‘marriage defence’ but homophobia. One of the ways that homophobia is most deeply entrenched in society is through law, although one of the key ways to fight homophobia is also through the law.

Because the State has always been so deeply intertwined with religion, one of the long term ways to break the ‘heterosexual contract’ has been bringing into question the received ideas about the relationship between the State, sex and religion. Aldrich went on to discuss this through a case study of the history of same-sex marriage and accompanying legislation in France with occasional comparison with Britain.

Interesting points included:

  • In France, a marriage is only legal if it is performed by a civil official; it is not recognised by the State if it is only performed by a priest, imam, etc.
  • The French National Assembly, in 1791, passed legislation which decriminalised homosexual acts (176 years before England). Previously, homosexuals could have been arrested, convicted, even burned at the stake, for committing sodomy. The change in the law, however, did not reflect a social change; homophobia was still considered to be a vice or evil.
  • Sodomy was decriminalised only because it was deemed to be taking place in the private sphere without causing damage to others and because the State had decided that the church should not be involved in law-making; separation between church and State.
  • Gay men continued to be a target for legal discrimination and harassment; e.g. via age of consent laws, etc. There were no laws to protect homosexuals.
  • Paris, of course, had the reputation for sexual licence. Even in the face of legal interdiction, there was ‘naughtiness’, as Aldrich put it, everywhere. Interdiction did not stymy gay and lesbian life but instead gave it a different slant.

Before taking questions, Aldrich concluded by asking ‘how widely applicable, how universalistic are the principles that govern such relationships’? Laws given to Britain and France’s colonies concerning sodomy laws were different but considered equally universal by both those they were given to and those who did the giving.

To Aldrich, the question of sodomy and the State is really about the constitution of society, about the boundaries of public and private, about relations between the individual and the polity.

Find out more