Q&A: Are entrepreneurship dreams not for girls?

Pernille Berg, fil.dr, and Nanna-Katrine Lange, a PhD candidate at the Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen, explore these questions in a discussion organized by the Foundation for Entrepreneurship. Read more to delve deeper into these puzzles of diversity.

Your research examines why there is a development in the aspirations of boys and girls within entrepreneurship. 

Why is it so important that we investigate this topic? 

When we conducted the pilot study, the development in the interest in entrepreneurship that occurred in just two to three years came as a surprise. While boys and girls initially have the same interests and attitudes towards entrepreneurship, they apparently develop very different views on whether it is something they want to engage in as they get older. 

This caused great wonderment among my colleagues and me, prompting us to ask: why is this so? We simply set out to investigate. 

And it's important because we lose a realm of possibilities when we do not ensure that everyone is empowered and reminded that there is a universe ahead of them where they can unfold their solutions and passions outside of traditional employment. We lose the opportunity for more people to develop good ideas. This way, inequality in the realization of inventions arises, and solutions are created for some and not for all.

How do we investigate the differences between girls and boys? 

During the project, I use both qualitative and quantitative methods. So far, I have conducted just over 20 interviews with boys and girls in 7th and 8th grades. In these interviews, we discuss what shapes their future dreams and how entrepreneurship is perceived, both as an independent concept and in terms of whether the interviewees can see themselves in it. Later this year, I will follow up on the interviews with a large questionnaire collection, conducted in collaboration with Statistics Denmark and distributed to young people aged 13 to 18 years. This is to see if my findings about the reasons for the difference can be found in a broader population context.   

In 2025 and 2026, we focus on finding out what we can do to reduce the difference in girls' and boys' desire to work with entrepreneurship. This phase will involve several schools testing interventions, so there is significant involvement of both students and teachers in the second phase of the project. 

As part of your research, you aim to develop some interventions. What is an intervention in this context? 

Intervention research is perhaps best known from the field of medicine, where one group is given a newly developed drug and another group a placebo pill. In this context, it's not about pills, but educational materials. After the first year of the project, I will collaborate with skilled didactics experts to develop educational materials for middle school and high school based on findings about why girls opt out of entrepreneurship. 

The purpose of these materials is to open up the possibilities for working with entrepreneurship regardless of gender and to expand ideas around it. They are designed to support the notion that it's perfectly fine not to want to be an entrepreneur. However, the choice not to pursue entrepreneurship should be an informed decision, not conditioned by culture or prejudices. 

How will you be able to see if it makes a difference? 

Methodologically, I can see it by comparing questionnaire responses from the students. Both their own responses before and after participating in the project, and also with students who receive "regular" entrepreneurship education without a focus on the gender perspective. Additionally, I am fortunate to also be able to collect qualitative knowledge from the students and teachers who participate in the project and test the materials. This is a good way to capture the nuances. 

The idea is that participation in the project also involves teachers and their classes in the sense that it's possible for them to follow the research and provide their own inputs along the way. 

What significance does your research have for young people in elementary schools? 

In the short term, I hope that the participating students gain new perspectives on how entrepreneurship can be exciting and rewarding to work with—that it might not need to be such a binary concept. 

Perhaps it could be something you test out or combine with your dream job, and that the title "entrepreneur" might not be a goal in itself, but rather an aspect of a career path. I have actually already seen several students who, after just a 30-minute conversation with me, became significantly more interested in entrepreneurship. And that's not because I'm a fantastic career counselor, but rather because there's genuinely something to work with. 

In the long term, of course, my great hope is that projects like this can contribute to more significant changes in society. I actually believe that we can change the rather dismal figures we see in the gender distribution in entrepreneurship. But it requires that we redefine many aspects, and with this project, we start where individuals develop their understanding of who they really are, and whether they can even become entrepreneurs. 

Do you currently have any explanation for what happens in 6th-7th grades (middle school)? 

Research indicates that a lot happens at this age. This is when individuals truly begin to reflect on their selves and gain an understanding of how they can position themselves in the world to express who they are. Gender is a factor that plays a significant role in many areas, regardless of one’s opinions on the matter, because we have certain perceptions of what boys and girls can and should do. 

It is well supported that there is a difference in the self-confidence of boys and girls (and men and women) regarding whether they would be good at working with entrepreneurship, and there is also a lot of discussion about differences in risk tolerance. I think perhaps we need to take a step back and reflect on why we see these statistical differences when we measure them. It quickly becomes about encouraging girls to believe in themselves more and to be braver. However, I believe there is more at play. Are we really selling entrepreneurship correctly? There are many cool things one can be, so we must be careful not to make it all about timid girls.