Impact Podcast | Is entrepreneurship really a level playing field?

KANINA BLANCHARD (KB):
Exclusive insights, actionable strategies and ideas that ignite change. You're listening to the Ivey Impact Podcast from Ivey Business School.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW (JuB):
Hello and welcome to Dialogue with the Dean, the flagship series on the Ivey Impact podcast. I'm Julian Birkinshaw, Dean of the Ivey Business School. In this series, I speak with Ivey's leading faculty to explore the research shaping business and society. Today on this episode, we're looking at the promise and the paradox of entrepreneurship. Often described as the great equalizer, entrepreneurship is meant to be a space where anyone with a great idea can succeed. But is the system actually set up to make that happen?

To explore this, I'm joined by Janice Byrne, Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship at Ivey, the Corus Entertainment Chair in Women in Management, and a leading voice on the gendered nature of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Unpacking three of her pivotal studies, Janice will discuss how women could unlock the next wave of entrepreneurial growth and why changing the system to support that potential is something we can all help to drive. Janice, welcome to Dialogue with the Dean.

JANICE BYRNE (JaB):
Great to be here.

JuB:
Thanks. So I want to start with your journey. What got you to Ivey? Just give us a sense of how you came from Ireland via France to Canada.

JaB:
Yeah, so, yeah. I'm Irish and I started my academic career in France. I started working on entrepreneurship training and support and then developed a special expertise in women's entrepreneurship. And then I guess I, I was looking for a challenge, and I wanted an international move, and Canada gets its reputation as an open and diverse, socially progressive country was appealing to me, uh matched with my family's needs at the time, too. So we came here and Ivey was looking for faculty, to expand its entrepreneurship faculty, but also were interested in my background, my interest in, gender and diversity and also my experience of community engagement. I think it was appealing. So.

JuB:
And you, as you said, you have an interest in gender diversity. You also have a real interest in entrepreneurship as well- both strengths for Ivey. We're going to look at three of your academic papers, and we're gonna have a little deep dive into each one actually, because I think they've all got a really interesting practical story as well as being well, wellrespected academic articles.

We're going to go back to one you wrote called, "Gender Gymnastics in CEO Succession: Masculinity, Femininity and Legitimacy." So tell us about the origins of that paper. Where did it come from? What are you trying to to show in that paper. 

JaB:
So we were looking at succession in family business. It was actually, a colleague of mine, Salma Fatum, who was working on succession and family business. And I was having a conversation with her one day, and she was talking about the different instances of passing a company from father to son, or in some less instances, from father to daughter. And because my interest was in gender, we started talking about the gendered nature of family business succession. So that's what we started to look at really. When we talk about the gender gymnastics, I guess what we look at is really the, the changing, the behaviours that the, both men and women have to engage in, to really play to the room to the expectations of various different stakeholders.

JuB:
And you use this phrase, doing gender. Now I'm not sure I would dare to say that. What do you mean by chief executives doing gender as they plan succession? 

JaB:
Right. So when we think about gender, typically we think like it's we are a man or a woman, right? In binary terms. But, we actually, there's, we actually do gender. So in terms of our interactions on a daily basis, both men and women can engage in masculine and feminine behaviours as they go. So that's essentially when we're doing gender, we're performing. We're doing a certain way of things. 

JuB:
And so unpack that a bit, because I dare say there are wrong behaviours, attributes that we associate more with men than women and vice versa. What are those? 

JaB:
Well, so in this instance, what we found was that there was so, um, successors both men and women in family business were engaging in, say, entrepreneurial masculinity. Really this kind of idea, you know, I can grow this company, right? And, you know, I'm doubling the workforce, or, you know, working all hours to hit sales figures or another kind of masculinity in this regard that we found was kind of, an authoritarian kind of masculinity, kind of a strong leader. I can come in and I'm gonna make rational decisions, and I can cut some of the workforce if needs be, you know, put a new order on around here. And so there was some of these behaviours that were more kind of strong leadership behaviours. But we also found that there was actually some feminine, behaviours or feminine, leadership. So in other words, there was relational femininity where leaders would be talking about collaboration and consulting existing management team as they came in. So these successors would need to engage in these type of behaviours to get more people on board and to kind of, yeah, to pacify or I guess, get people with them in their initiatives.

JuB:
And the, the academic literature says that the sort of relational management, I mean, we can probably agree that this is a a good way of working anyway in terms of building relationships and empathizing and trying to get the best and the academic literature would say on average these are behaviours more associated with women than men. 

JaB: 
Right. 

JuB:
Right. And you're saying in this paper that this is the concept of gender gymnastics, is that the in the process of trying to manage succession from, you know, men to women, to women to men, whatever, that these chief executives are consciously, you know, using the different tools available to them, almost regardless what their actual gender is, they're trying to. So do you, do you come to a view, as it were setting aside gender for a second, as to what types of behaviours, what types of identities were more so, more effective when it comes to CEO succession?

JaB:
Yeah. So in this instance, and I suppose we should also be mindful of context. So it was in, it was in France and they are in family businesses, right? So yeah absolutely, we could see that in the family business. Say there's kind of a paternalistic way somebody's coming in and assuring that I'm going to protect the, the legacy of the company and the values are going to stay the same. Those type of things were important. So there was kind of preferred ways of doing things.

I suppose what we found that was different, though, in terms of being disadvantageous or more difficult for women was the fact that, you know, there's this, the relational aspect that you talked about which would be beneficial for both men and women, and that they both enacted to, to get people on board as they were coming in as the new successor. But the difference is that, you know, for men, when they were exercising or enacting this kind of relational femininity, it was seen as, a strategic kind of leadership, like, you know, whereas for women, it was like normal that they were doing this. They were expected to do that. 

JuB:
Okay. And the, the outcome you're looking for here, you talk a lot about legitimacy. And so, so you're not measuring, was the company subsequently successful. You're, almost like, trying to figure out is the person who's taking over, whether they're female or male, are they seen as legitimate by the family and indeed by the business community around them. Is that correct?

JaB:
Yeah. Which would ultimately have an impact, obviously, on the performance. Because if we perceive them to be legitimate, they will have more- they will be given more remit to do what they want to do to make change or not. 

JuB:
Got it. Yeah. So if you are advising and this happens a lot, right. There's many, many family-owned enterprises in Canada, around the world, where, you know, the founder would love to hang on. But sometimes that's a mistake. Sometimes they should just go to professional management. Sometimes they have to make some, some smart choices about which of their kids to go with. Any kind of tips from the how would you handle this well on the basis of this study.

JaB:
Yeah. So with a gender lens, I guess, on this, I would say that first of all, it's like awareness, right? Recognize that, even the best intentioned among us, this concept of fit or readiness to take is gendered itself, right? And so we can think in terms of, you know, who is strong enough to do this or who is, you know, and so to recognize that this notion of fit and readiness is itself gendered. And to think in advance of succession mechanisms that you can put in place. I mean, I can think of one example where there was a daughter who took over from her father, and unexpected actually, he got, he got ill and she, she ended up taking over the business, and she was mentored for the last year by the finance director and he was, this was really crucial to her success at this. So this the CFO was helping her take over and, it was a successful transition. But that was it was almost like happen stance. This wasn't planned for, right? So plan for it and plan these mentoring things and think about these relationships in advance, because they are so important.

JuB:
Yeah. I mean, it seems to me that this is almost like generically good advice in terms of being, you know, conscious of all the different ways in which you should approach, any business decision, whether it's a family succession or anything else. Using relational attributes, qualities to bring people along, but sometimes having to be a little bit more decisive and occasionally, you know, having to choose between courses. 

JaB:
Absolutely. But I also think, I guess, to, to make it more specific, in the case of family business, I wonder if this dimension of tradition can be sometimes stronger, right? So I'm kind of thinking about cases where there was sons taking over, or daughters taking over at a time in their lives, often when they have young children, right? But in our interviews with these son successors, hardly any mention of child, children, like logistics, all that type of thing, right? Yet the women that were taking over again, same stage of life, young kids and their lives were just, you were listening to them, you were tired listening to them. And I just, I wonder if in a family business situation is the, this is it potentially that this, you know, traditional values about family are so important and that you've got women really trying to, you know, there was one woman who said, you know, you give like I give 400% to work and 500% to family. And there was even a father who kind of spoke disparagingly about one of his sons who he didn't hand over the business to. He handed it over to his daughter, and, but he spoke a little bit disparaging about this son who was as you know, he was, he described him as a new age dad, almost like, as if, a hands-on kind of new age dad was disqualified in his eyes as being a potential family business leader.

*MUSICAL BREAK*

JuB:
We're going to move on. We've got two other papers to talk about moving from CEO succession in family businesses to entrepreneurship, which is really your main area of research. The first one, I'll read the title because again, you've got a, you've got a knack for kind of interesting titles, "Role Models and Women Entrepreneurs: Entrepreneurial Superwoman Has Her Say." So again, just tell us a little bit about that. This is work again you did in, in France. 

JaB:
Yeah. And it was looking at a government promotional campaign that was that profiled a number of successful women entrepreneurs in France, 51 of them. And the idea was that these women were held up as inspiration. They were to inspire younger women. They were going into schools. They had a social media campaign. They were at public events where they would talk about their stories, really just to inspire more women to get into entrepreneurship. And so what we did was we looked at the narratives and the messages that they were sending and essentially we found that, so, they were to be promoting, they were promoted as models of successful women entrepreneurs, but they were promoting a very narrow version of what entrepreneurial success could be.

JuB:
And as I read the paper, you were looking at these different categories, if you like, of role models. Do you want to just lay out, one of them obviously, was the entrepreneurial superwoman who just does it all and somehow you said early, you know, 300% here, 400% there. That's one model. But there were, there were a bunch of other models which were somehow, I don't know, a little bit less inspiring for me as I must admit in reading the paper, I got a little bit depressed. And perhaps we'll turn into a positive at the end, but just take us through some of the other models because they weren't actually as inspiring as you'd like them to be. 

JaB:
Yeah. So, some, for example, there was one was the funpreneur, right? So and we still do see this where there will be a focus on the enjoyment and the pleasure. We could talk about a passion project, so not necessarily a business that's actually, extremely profitable maybe, but I'm getting so much pleasure and fun out of it that it's great. Which, yeah, again, I mean, who doesn't want to get up every morning and enjoy what they do every day, but at the same time, we need to earn a living. So and in some instances, I guess it was masking, perhaps you have a financial situation at home where you can afford to do that. So this is just a fun project.

JuB:
So the funpreneur and then you had the mumpreneur and then the nonpreneur. None of which, kind of, comes across as the sort of the story that we, we often end up reading in the business press when it's associated with men. And I, it felt like to completely mischaracterize or to simplify, I mean, there's, there's a few who were the entrepreneurial super women who did it all and then all these other models were kind of, this is plan B and it's not really making any money. And that feels a bit too binary to me. 

JaB: 
Yeah, and neither are the real story right. Yeah.

JuB:
Right, right. So, how do you and not so much make sense of it because this is what the data said but how do we somehow resolve this in terms of either the advice we're giving to women who want to be entrepreneurs or the structures in society that are trying to support?

JaB:
For me, I guess, the learning for me or take away for me was really in terms of the support system and on the policy side, or, you know, people in incubators or accelerators, because there's a lot of well-intentioned folks, right, who want to change things. And I mean, we've seen even here in Canada, it's like, you know, you can't be it if you can't see it, like so, I mean, there's there's definitely this drive to, oh, we need more women role models, but there needs to be attention to obviously the, the message that's being sent out, the women who are being profiled, and what they're saying. So we need to pay more attention to that. And so this diversity of role models is extremely important, which I do think, in fairness, I do think now we are starting to see enough. We do see an awful lot more. We do definitely.

JuB: 
So the campaign in France. I mean, they found these 51 role models. I mean, obviously they didn't do a sort of a scientific approach. They just found interesting female entrepreneurs that they chose to profile and no doubt they had lots of other dimensions of diversity they were working on as well. And you're saying that actually that perhaps they could have found some better ones or, or perhaps if we switch it back to Canada. I mean, can we a bit more specific about what, what what sort of advice.

JaB:
So it's not even just, so diversity, as I said I think we're hitting on that now, but also pay attention to what we're saying. And I think so we romant- and this is for both men and women role model entrepreneurs, we romanticize the thing the whole time. And so let's have more honest conversations. Let's, you know, like, let's not glorify all hours that we work, you know, or that the momtrepreneur aspect. Oh, it's great. It's flexible. You can do that. But you're up until 2:00 in the morning, you know, working on something because after you put you've done the double shift and put the kids to bed. So and why don't we have, for example, more men entrepreneurs who are talking about, you know, their kids and how they manage that, those logistics? So why don't we have a little bit more normalization around, like, look why is it that we work 80 hours a week? Do, do we have to do that? Why don't we kind of have some kind of questioning of these, you know, just work like crazy heroic entrepreneur figures.

*MUSICAL BREAK*

JuB:
Let's talk about the third paper now: "The Rise and Fall of the Girlboss: Gender social Expectations and Entrepreneur Hype." Girlboss. Just tell us what girlboss is. Again, it's a phrase I would never dare to use. 

JaB:
Yeah. So the superwoman paper was like 2019 and obviously based on data that would have been a little bit earlier. So when we talk about the girlboss and this paper was just published in 2025, so this is the, you know, having it all. And from 2000- 2010, pretty much to, you know, to 2014 was the peak of the girlboss tag, right? 

JuB:
And this I, I read in your paper, Sophia Amoruso was the lady. Yeah. Coined this.

JaB:
Exactly. Yeah. 

JuB:
And did she do it in sort of like a flippant way. I mean, was it somehow the badge that she wanted? And who was Sophia Amaro. 

So, Sophia, a real rags to riches story, and that's glorified completely in the press, but so she founded Nasty Gal, which was a fashion retail outlet. But, you know, stories of her initially being like a dumpster diver, just, you know, not having much money and starting this from scratch. And so, ended up founding Nasty Gal, wrote a book about girlboss, how she, you know, built this massive company. There was a Netflix series on her. It really became a whole a whole thing and a moniker really for and a symbol for ambitious women entrepreneurs who were really changing the game. And so she, nasty gal was her business, but girlboss really became synonymous with her, but then also applied to other women founders who were breaking the mold.

JuB:
Right and that phrase then took off. And indeed this paper you're actually analyzing as much the sort of the way that the media talk about it as the, rather than the actual activities of these people. So this is, it's obviously based on female entrepreneurs, but it's about how we hype up these. So just tell us a little bit about what is the, what is the story here. It's a, it's a kind of classic sort of boom bust sort of hype and then downfall story, right?

JaB:
So I mean hype is a good thing for entrepreneurs. Hype, we, so, hype is like expectations, excitement about a phenomenon about a, a venture or a person- and entrepreneurs can really lean into that, right? And use that, you know, you can attract talent with it. You can get, capital investors, you can get customers excited and it opens doors for you, right? And this can also be good for women entrepreneurs, right? Because if you think about it in terms of if you're structurally disadvantaged, if we say that, you know, investors are likely to overlook women more so, but if you've got this big media hype around you and you're the next big thing, well, then you could have investors who get to hear about you, who would have, who maybe otherwise would have overlooked you. So that can be a good thing. So in the boom period, we really see that the media when this, with the super, with the girlboss tag, they would, you know, really zoom in on these women and talk about different aspects of, so they would like sometimes personalize it, right? So talk about maybe their, their clothing or their, their, family status or stuff like that. But they'd also exceptionalize them really talk about them as amazing women. You know, the first to do this, you know, or the, you know, the first billionaire or whatever, or the first founder in Silicon Valley to have to get this amount in funding or whatever. So, the really exceptionalizing them, personalizing them kind of zooming it like Elizabeth Holmes would, is one example. 

JuB:
Right, and Elizabeth Holmes, she was the I think she was, was it Stanford? Or was it California? She founded Theranos which was this wonderful company that would do sort of blood samples and, and, and allow you to diagnose things. But it turned out to be a complete fraud. And I remember that story and indeed she got all the hype in the world. And then, and I think your point is that, that when she, when she plummeted, she plummeted, you know, even further than a man who would have in that situation. 

JaB:
Yeah. And the things that we used to kind of, help the thing the seeds were planted and when we talked about her meteoric rise or whatever, then when she fell. So, like whereas before we would have been zoning in on her, you know, like her blue eyes and the black turtleneck, polo turtleneck that she wore or whatever. But then, we're talking about the fact that, you know, she used her gender and, you know, her feminine guile to kind of lure in, investors and to kind of attract this and, and that. So they actually, then she was demonized essentially, then. 

JuB:
Yeah, no. I remember I mean, she wrote and she ended up jail, rightly so. But the level of demonization was, was extreme. And in fact, in the paper, you explicitly compare the treatment of Elizabeth Holmes and Sam Bankman-Freid, the crypto guy.

JaB:
Who even, even though they were both involved in fraud. But in, in his instance, he's like one guy who gets it wrong, right? But Silicon, like she was held to account then for other women having difficulty, for example, raising funds in Silicon Valley because of her. And so she'd, she'd let all these women down. He hadn't let all down all the tech bros, you know?

JuB:
No it's, it's completely unfair. I mean I know you can't, we can't control the press. We never will. They may be able to sort of stop these hype cycles from happening. But any thoughts on what, what we might do to ameliorate this situation. 

JaB:
I think if you look at it from an ecosystem perspective, there's a number of different players who can do things. So in this instance we're looking at the media. And I think, you know, journalists can ask themselves, am I lean- like because when we use this, when we use framing, framing relies on gender stereotypes. And so, you know, am I, am I stereotyping someone here? Am I leaning into typical kind of gendered ways of looking at things? So you can ask questions about the framing. Investors can ask questions about, you know, well, who am I partnering with? Who am I, look, why am I involved? You know, what kind of lenses am I and when we know I mean, there's research that has shown that, like, we ask different questions to women entrepreneurs, as we do to men entrepreneurs. So really, for me, it's about awareness that no matter how well intentioned you are, gender bias comes into these things.

JuB: 
Right. 

*MUSICAL BREAK*

JuB:
Okay. Let's talk a little bit about Ivey because and indeed the situation in Canada because, you know, all of this research shows there's a, there's a challenge, there's a problem. But I do want us to also be positive and if I, if I think of, just for example, Ivey entrepreneurs and successful executives, I've met women. There's a, there's a pretty good list, there's plenty of examples of Ivey female entrepreneurs and indeed Canadian female entrepreneurs, but there's not enough, and I'd like you to share your thoughts on what Ivey is doing, what Ivey could be doing, to, to actually improve that situation.

JaB:
Well, I think that, even if our conversation thus far has been a little bit pessimistic, and some, a lot of my, two of those research studies do refer to France rather than Canada. I do think that since I've been, so I joined Ivey in 2019, and I have been bowled over by the amount of women alum who really want to change the, change the way things are going. Women entrepreneurs and women in, in leadership. So I am actually quite positive, about what Ivey women are doing at the moment. I think really to kind of to change the rules of the game.

JuB:
Got it. At Ivey we have the Morissette Institute for Entrepreneurship. Actually, it's a Western University-wide initiative. Tell us about some of the things that Morissette is doing to support female entrepreneurs. 

JaB:
So I think at Morissette, we're very aware of the need to be supportive for women who are interested in entrepreneurship. We've got more and more women founders in our accelerator. We're doing really well on that score. And, just recently, for example, we collaborated with Women Funding Women, which is a collective that is trying to get more women investors matched up with more women entrepreneurs. And that's just one example of numerous different initiatives that we have that are really trying to connect with the ecosystem and really drive change in this regard. 

JuB:
And there's one statistic I remember reading just a few months back is, there's a company called PitchBook, which is an American outfit, and they essentially track the, the university origins of people who've received money from venture capitalists and Western as a whole does incredibly well on that I think it came 29th in the world on that particular measure. So we clearly are making some real progress. 

JaB:
Yeah. And very proud and still a lot to do, and we're going to do it.

JuB:
And there's more, more to come. And how do you actually teach this subject when you're with your students? 

JaB:
So we've got lots of students who are interested in entrepreneurship, and then we've got lots of students who are interested in finance or VC. So definitely with, I love talking about the funding VC aspect, because there is so much great research out there that we can show that even well-intentioned people, if you're not aware of these type of things, you can reproduce bias. So that's something that I really do love to teach in classes, like just, you know, particularly if students are interested in VC, throw out some of these questions that potential angel investors or VCs could ask of entrepreneurs and kind of say, you know, how would you characterize each of these questions? And then challenge them and say, well, you know, well, how could you ask different types of questions to allow for people to tell a more positive story?

JuB:
Got it. And what are your next projects? 

JaB;
So I've jumped ship a little bit, because I am interested in women entrepreneurs still, of course, but I've started looking at women investors. So in Canada, angel investors and women in VC, because I'm really interested in the supply side of entrepreneurial finance. So we know, you know, the statistic is that less than 4% of venture capital in Canada goes to women entrepreneurs. It's quite a depressing statistic. But, so there is a big move on to get more women into more women investors, more, lending partners, managing partners. And I can just really feel there is a real momentum going in the industry. And I, engaging in a whole of interviews at the moment with different women, angel investors and women in VC to try to find out a little bit more about the dynamics, in that regard.

JuB:
Wonderful. So we've covered a lot of ground. Yeah. And if there's just one takeaway that you'd like the listeners to remember, maybe you have two, what would it be?

JaB:
So I think we need to get away from this entrepreneurial hero- this individual entrepreneurial hero because, so it's not about an individual. It is often about a collective and we need to recognize as well that there is, still a gendered division of labor that impinges on women's ability to really, engage in entrepreneurship to the same extent. Not all women are mothers. But there is, a significant, charge associated with, yeah, home production, like looking after, and that women are unfairly burdened with. And this gendered division of labor is one big thing that we need to kind of talk about. So childcare arrangements, structural arrangements that we need, we need to think about them seriously. And we need to think about our messaging. So if we're in accelerators, incubators, you know, our entrepreneurs in residence, what's our gender composition there? What's our ethnicity driver? Like what is the diversity there? And we really need to be mindful that we have a panel of speakers, who's, who's up there and we really need to start thinking about those type of things.

JuB:
Thank you very much. You have been listening to Dialogue with the Dean from Ivey Business School. My thanks to Janice Byrne for sharing her research and insights, and to you, our listeners, for being part of this important conversation. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe, share, and stay tuned for more conversations with and faculty on ideas shaping business and society. Until next time, goodbye.

KB:
This was Dialogue with the Dean and Ivey Impact Podcast series. For more insights from Ivey, including thought leadership on critical issues and additional podcast episodes, visit iveyimpact.ca or subscribe on your preferred podcast platform. Thanks for tuning in.