Abstract
In a tour de force that straddles centuries of industrial innovation – inspired while they were visiting scholars at the Stanford University’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research and the School of Humanities and Sciences – Poutanen and Kovalainen link gender, innovation and new forms of economic activity. In Chapter 1, they begin by ‘setting the scene’ and inviting us to ‘imagine modern society without innovation’. In considering ‘interconnected innovations’ and the ‘heavily gendered nature of innovation’, they dovetail inventions, innovations, gender and creativity. They observe the paucity of women in the science and engineering ecosystem, hence an underutilised resource, highlighting the limited current research on gender and scientific commercialisation.
Chapter 2, ‘Gender in inventions and innovations’, outlines the history, focusing first on household appliances such as washing machines and refrigerators as gendered innovations. They contrast ‘household’ versus ‘market’ logic – for example, the example of the draining closet for dishes invented by Mrs Gebhard, a Finnish lady, and the windshield wipers by Mrs Anderson from Birmingham, Alabama. The gender gap in patenting and the so-called leaky pipeline are also reviewed, as well as gendered networking patterns in science. The cases in this chapter include the EU Prize for Women Innovators and the Gender and General Science and Innovation Awards. They also discuss the Matthew/Matilda effects and gender differentials in research funding awards, male-dominated peer review and the role of gatekeepers. An insightful quote of scientists is that they ‘would like to think science is neutral territory and detached from gender and any gendered effects’. Clearly, scientists’ objective scientific ontology/epistemology is more subjective than claimed.
In Chapter 3, ‘The new economy, platform economy and gender’, they, then, consider dot.com, apps and so on and how digital platforms have changed product and labour markets. First, they define the new economy, platform economy and gig economy and then they move on to consider the changing relationships between gender, work and capital in terms of creatives and different measures (entrepreneurs and owners). They highlight that entrepreneurial finance is not ‘gender-less’, discussing crowdfunding. They discuss diversity in both founding and funding teams, and how ‘gender has become ingrained’ (emphasis added), with gender differences in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and knowledge workers. They then review the platform, gig and sharing economy and the role of digitalisation, with the excellent gendered cases comparing Eastman Kodak and Instagram.
Chapter 4, ‘Innovations, gender and the new economy’, considers digitalisation, which they describe as the ‘central common feature’ (p. 97) of the new economy, for example, digital platforms, and which is gendered. They next review gender and the gaming industry, including technical literacy and ‘girls’ games’, as well as my own favourite phrase in the book, ‘a tween-centric virtual world game’, and issues of consumption and gender – gendering of gaming scenes, communities and players. The gamification of education and ‘augmented reality games’ (e.g. Pokémon Go) and ‘how gender becomes displayed or becomes an active agent are hugely complex questions’ (p. 106), as well as ‘gender-loaded tasks in games’ and the ‘dadification of digital games’, are reviewed. In many ways, this section is one of the most fascinating in the whole book. Other sections in this chapter include gender and technical design; ‘girls changing codes’, where websites ‘distance men and women’, yet they are ‘bound together’; and the gendered Internet of things focusing on smart appliances and the gendering of Angry Birds characters. The section on gender and technical design in particular includes a case study of Linda Liukas’ Kickstarter-crowdfunded game ‘Hello Ruby’ whose lead character is a 6-year-old girl.
Chapter 5, ‘Creative work and gender’, examines, first, boundary-spanning creative work considering the features of creative and cultured industries, and the issues of gendered positions and salaries (inequalities), before moving onto a case of Alice, an executive at an IT corporate, who is in all respects a ‘creative’ yet is classified by statisticians (and other ‘experts’) as manager. We know what Disraeli (via Twain) and Churchill said about statistics and what more recent UK politicians said about experts. The section discusses care and technical innovations, explains how we can ‘distinguish the new economy within the field of care’, and how it is gendered and impacted by technology, which too are ‘strongly gendered by nature’, and the globally (mainly female) mobile care workforce, gendered opportunities and constraints, and productivity. The next section on the hybridisation of care work includes telemedicine, biofeedback and venture labour.
Chapter 6, ‘Envisaging the future’, begins by illustrating the different gendered outcomes of incremental and radical innovations and the lack of women inventing and innovating (especially in science and technology), hence the lack of a gender aspect. They also highlight, not unfamiliar to entrepreneurship researchers, the ‘male norm as the measure of excellence and success’ and how ‘all innovations are highly gendered in many ways’ (p. 171). In closing the book, the authors propose some future research directions, noting that ‘innovations … are still highly gendered and also gender-biased’ (p. 172) and ‘financial values’ in innovation, health care (e.g. female ‘migrant care workers’), STEM ‘gender gap’, the gig economy and platform economy are all ripe for future research. Their concluding comments offer some excellent highlights from the book, concluding that it has illuminated ‘fields … where gender analysis is non-existent’ (p. 180).
In summary, this book not only provides relevant insights into how inventions and innovations, particularly the digitalised ‘new economy’, are highly gendered but explicitly applies it to the entrepreneurial realm and entrepreneurial finance. Each of the chapters is, therefore, underpinned by a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the relevant theory and prior empirical research that is explained and applied effectively throughout. The chapters include illustrative case studies that relate the theories to the ‘real world’, as well as shed light on the gendered processes and phenomena that characterise topical contemporary technological and entrepreneurial developments.