Uncovering female academics’ unmet needs in starting their journey towards entrepreneurship through a participatory workshop

Globally, there are gender inequalities in research, entrepreneurship and innovation (E&I), with fewer women led startups and long-term successful businesses, and gender inequalities in funding and support for new businesses. In STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) research, fewer women hold patents, receive large grants to support their work, or develop successful spinouts. This may be attributed to many reasons – both professional and personal – such as fewer women in STEM, gender discrimination in research cultures, career breaks and systematic undervaluing of women’s research. For the EU, this uneven playing field creates a significant waste of talent and resources. Greater diversity is needed if we are to collectively solve global problems. The Horizon Europe funded GILL project (https://gi-ll.eu) aims to address such gender inequalities by providing actionable strategies to foster gender sensitive changes at all stages of the E&I lifecycle. With a goal of better addressing the needs of female researchers who want to develop spin outs out of their research, a literature review, phenomenological interviews and an exploratory workshop were used to understand women’s entrepreneurial journeys, their needs and the barriers they had faced, with a view to designing better support. The paper briefly reviews the results from the literature and interviews before concentrating on the workshop and emergent needs of a group of previously unrecognised staff wishing to set up their own businesses. Workshop participants, mostly from minority, ethnic backgrounds generously shared their ideas and challenges in starting their business journeys, e.g. focussing on business creation as part of their life journey and a route to self-fulfilment set against their roles, and cultural expectations placed on them as daughters, wives and mothers. The results generated from the small workshop has opened up a new research direction and clearly revealed an unmet need in Higher Education Institutions, and elsewhere, to support for women’s entrepreneurial journeys.