Gender and Education

Vol. 21, No. 6, November 2009, 631649

Risk-taking abilities for everyone? Finnish entrepreneurship

education and the enterprising selves imagined by pupils
Katri Komulainen*, Maija Korhonen and Hannu Rty
Department of Psychology, University of Joensuu, Joensuu, Finland
(Received 5 December 2007; final version received 11 November 2008)
Taylor and Francis
CGEE_A_368173.sgm

Gender
10.1080/09540250802680032
0954-0253
Original
Taylor
02009
00
Dr.
Katri.Komulainen@Joensuu.Fi
000002009
KatriKomulainen
&
and
Article
Francis
(print)/1360-0516
Education
(online)

This article examines the spread of the neo-liberal educational policy in Finnish
schools by considering entrepreneurship education. We examined the kinds of
gendered and classed enterprising selves that were narrated in the Finnish writing
competition Good Enterprise! written by pupils in the 9th grade of comprehensive
school. In their narratives of enterprising selves, the pupils constructed the middleclass version of the self, where the person was not contingent upon external effects
but an autonomous self-governing individual. Moreover, the possible selves of boys
matched the culturally valued representations of the autonomous, risk-taking
entrepreneurial individual more closely than the self-representations of girls did.
However, it was especially the boys narratives of modest entrepreneurship with
the traditional virtues of the respectable citizen that were successful in the
competition. This finding is in conflict with the educational policies of the European
Union, which call for risk-taking abilities and competition as pre-conditions for
achieving progress.
Keywords: neo-liberalism; entrepreneurship education; pupils narratives;
enterprising self; gender; class

Introduction
In 2004 the Finnish Ministry of Education started an action plan which aims to
promote a general enterprising attitude inner entrepreneurship and to make entrepreneurship a new basic skill and competence for every citizen (Finnish Ministry of
Education 2004; European Commission 2004). In Finland, the support of entrepreneurship education is the latest manifestation of the restructuring of education to be in
line with the neo-liberal spirit.
Most European countries have a policy commitment to promote learning about
entrepreneurship, but this has not yet made it a widespread subject in European educational systems (European Commission 2006). Finland, however, has turned out to be
an early adopter and reformer, and entrepreneurship education is now taken into
consideration throughout the school system, from primary schools to universities. For
example, participatory citizenship and entrepreneurship is a new module in the
Finnish national core curriculum for comprehensive schools (Finnish National Board
of Education 2007). As the schools have traditionally socialised citizens into paid
work and encouraged them to develop such abilities and gifts as are particularly useful
in paid work (Willis 1978), entrepreneurship education poses new sorts of demands to
*Corresponding author. Email: katri.komulainen@joyx.joensuu.fi
ISSN 0954-0253 print/ISSN 1360-0516 online
2009 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/09540250802680032
http://www.informaworld.com

632

K. Komulainen et al.

the school (for these demands, see Gibb 2002; Hytti and OGorman 2004). Entrepreneurship education seeks not only to affect young peoples career choices but also to
recast their attitudes and values and their conceptions of their own abilities, skills, and
intelligence.
The Finnish Ministry of Education (2004) presents entrepreneurship as a class- and
gender-neutral, inclusive route to employment for every citizen. Citizens are defined,
above all, as individuals and are taken to be active subjects, not passive objects. As
a construction, however, the entrepreneur is far from a gender- and class-neutral one:
entrepreneurship is historically located in the symbolic universe of maleness, and
hegemonic masculinity is also embodied in the figure of the entrepreneur (Mulholland
1996; Bruni, Gerhardi, and Poggio 2004). The middle-class, masculine representation
of the entrepreneur is constructed above all in the textbooks of entrepreneurship education. Finnish textbooks emphasise gender and class differences at the cost of equality,
highlighting the interconnections that link entrepreneurship, leadership, individuality,
and middle-class masculinity (Komulainen 2006).
In this article we examine the new task of educating enterprising citizens that the
school now faces by analysing the kinds of gendered and classed enterprising self that
are created in the annual Finnish writing competition Good Enterprise! (Yritys hyv!
in Finnish). The research is part of the larger research project Enterprising Self
Education, Subjectivity and the Processes of Inclusion and Exclusion in Late Modern
Society funded by the Academy of Finland. The competition, which has been organised since 1986, is targeted at pupils in the 9th grade of comprehensive school and
pupils in upper secondary school. About 4801150 essays have been sent to the
competition every year. To find out what kinds of enterprising selves the schools
regard as desirable, we compared the successful, prize-winning narratives with the
assessed but unrewarded ones. By the concept of the enterprising self, we refer to the
ethos, shaped in various institutions such as the school system, in which an entrepreneur-like line of action and self-relationship, or a certain way of seeing oneself, are
offered as models for wage-workers, too. The concept of the enterprising self ties in
with various moral models of the good life (Rose 1992). The concept also includes the
conceptions of abilities, by which we refer to different conceptions of the individual
characteristics and attitudes that are necessary in entrepreneurship, such as initiative,
independence, risk-taking, self-reliance, and self-responsibility (Rty and Snellman
1998). Koski (2008) argues that the emergence of the enterprising self in educational
policy-making throughout the European Union is a symbol of the new technologies of
moral regulation. As a moral precept, the enterprising self has ambivalent and contradictory dimensions: it endorses one set of personal properties and defines others as
deviant.
In our analysis we are particularly interested in the kinds of narratives of the enterprising self that pupils write in the competition and the kinds of gendered and classed
subject positions that are created in these narratives (cf. Skeggs 1997, 12). Do pupils
construct masculine, middle-class enterprising selves, or do their narratives reflect
alternative meanings attached to entrepreneurship? In addition, we reflect on the different ways pupils are positioned in relation to the ideals of the enterprising self. Even if
our information on the participating pupils is limited to their school, grade level, and
gender, we suggest that the resources for writing, representing and displaying the
enterprising self are not equally available to them. Thus, our study is about the different
gendered and classed positions that the competition offers to girls and boys from
different class backgrounds as they write a story about themselves as entrepreneurs.

Gender and Education

633

Moreover, we reflect on the kinds of narratives of the enterprising self that are successful in the competition.
Our approach, then, is the cultural study of class that, according to Diane Reay,
focus[es] on class processes and practices, the everyday workings of social class, developing conceptualisations that move beyond economic and exchange to understand the
consequences of cultural struggle and how this is part of new marketisation, new attributions of value, new forms of appropriation, exploitation and governance, and new
selves. (2006, 289)

Class as a discursive construction includes elements of fantasy and projection (Skeggs

1997). Class and gender as social divisions involve a classification of the population
(i.e. a taxonomy of persons) and a range of systematic social processes that relate to
that taxonomy and serve to produce socially meaningful and systematic practices and
outcomes of inequality (Anthias 2001). We are especially interested in the class- and
gender-specific taxonomies of entrepreneurial abilities. The class-bound taxonomies
of abilities that are based on such divisions as the mind and the body or the mental and
the manual are morally loaded (Skeggs 2004; Rty, Kasanen, and Krkkinen 2006)
and structurally extant and continue to infest class-bound classifications, identifications, and cultures (Thiel 2007).
In most of the research on entrepreneurship and the education for it, the unquestioned and unspoken backdrop is the idea that entrepreneurship is good because it
contributes to economic growth (Ahl 2002). Hence, entrepreneurship is analysed in
gender- and class-neutral ways, and questions of power and inequality are ignored.
Although the European Union promotes entrepreneurship education in European
schools systems, feminist research on entrepreneurship education is almost nonexistent. Our analysis provides feminist and social psychological perspectives to
entrepreneurship education and to the formation of subjectivities under the aegis of the
neo-liberal governance of education.
The context of the analysis the neo-liberal educational policy
Following the theoretical ideas of Foucault (1991), we approach the enterprising self
not as a collection of individual traits but as a process created through governance in
education. Governmentality can be understood as a way of explaining the establishment and exercise of political power in which the concept of government is broader
than management by the state. Governance is a productive power that is embodied in
the rules through which individuality is understood, acted on and differentiated in
social practices (Popkewitz and Lindblad 2004). Both liberalism and neo-liberalism
constitute political rationalities or mentalities of government. According to Olssen,
Codd, and ONeill (2004, 136), however, to understand the transformation of the
current politics of education, it is absolutely essential to understand the differences
between liberalism and neo-liberalism. Whereas classical liberalism represented a
negative conception of state power in that the individual was seen as an object to be
freed from the interventions of the state, neo-liberalism has come to represent a positive conception of the states role: in neo-liberalism the state seeks to create an individual that is an enterprising and competitive entrepreneur.
Lahelma and hrn (2003) argue that the neo-liberal restructuring of education has
weakened the politics of equal opportunity in Finland as well as the other Nordic countries. Therefore, making the gender and class differences constructed in entrepreneurship

634

K. Komulainen et al.

education visible is especially important where the effects of neo-liberal educational

policies on equality and social justice are analysed. However, the extent to which Finnish
schools have already been affected by neo-liberalism is under debate. According to
Simola, Rinne, and Kivirauma (2002), an essential political shift to the right has been
realised in Finnish educational policy during the last 10 years. Antikainen (2006) argues
that although the economic integration of Europe is also leading to educational integration, the Nordic education systems are a part of the Nordic welfare state. It remains
to be seen whether the Nordic models of education will be valued in Europe.
The data the writing competition as a pedagogical tool for producing
citizens-to-be
As mentioned earlier, we approach the writing competition from the viewpoints of
governmentality and narrative social psychology. On the one hand, the writing competition is a pedagogical practice that invites the pupils to consider who they are and
what they are to become. It functions as a system of discipline by which hierarchies,
i.e. markers of social distinctions and aspirations, are established (Popkewitz and
Lindblad 2004). On the other hand, the competition is a technology of the self by
which the pupils shape their visions of themselves and of others (Rose 1992). In this
article we concentrate especially on the latter aspect of the writing competition.
The competition encourages pupils to form future-oriented self-conceptions, which
Markus and Nurius (1986) call possible selves. Possible selves are the selves the person
could become, would like to become, or are afraid of becoming. They build a bridge
between the current state and the desired outcome. When creating their possible selves,
the pupils make use of the cultural stock of narratives and myths that are accessible to
them. Cultural story models can act as normative, ideological schemes prescribing how
one should act and feel in a certain position or situation; the cultural warehouse
contains model stories and separate departments for people of different classes, ages,
and genders (Hnninen 1999). Moreover, the narrative approach focuses on the drama
rather than the economy of entrepreneurship and situates the social processes of entrepreneurship in everyday social interaction (Hjorth and Steyart 2004).
Our data consisted of two samples. The primary one consisted of the writings sent
to the competition every second year since 2000. These writings were assessed but not
rewarded by the jury. We analysed essays from the years 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006
written in Finnish by pupils in the 9th grade of comprehensive school (1999 essays in
all). The secondary sample consisted of the prize-winning writings from the years
19862006 (210 essays in all). In the 9th grade of comprehensive school pupils are
15 years old.
In both samples, we distinguished between the narratives and the argumentative
essays and focused on the narratives. The primary sample included 368 (18%) and
the secondary sample 40 (19%) argumentative essays. These essays were excluded
from the present set of analyses because argumentative essays are general considerations of the nature of entrepreneurship whereas the constructions of possible enterprising selves that we were after occur only in the narratives (Korhonen, Komulainen,
and Rty 2008). Besides, as a different text type, argumentative essays would require
an interpretative approach rising from the rhetorical, rather than the narrative, analytic
tradition. Accordingly, our final samples consisted of 1631 unrewarded narratives,
76% of which were written by girls and 24% by boys, and 170 prize-winning narratives, 64% of which were written by girls and 36% by boys.

Gender and Education

635

The annual writing competition is organised by Finnish local schools in cooperation with the Foundation of Entrepreneurs and the Centre for School Clubs which is a
support and service organisation promoting the schools educational work. According
to the Centre for School Clubs (2008), the original purpose of the competition was to
give young people who were about to complete comprehensive school, beginning to
gain independence, and seeking a direction for their careers an opportunity to experientially enter into the world of the entrepreneur. In the early days the viewpoint of
vocational guidance and advancing the knowledge of working life figured prominently in the objectives and task-setting of the competition. In the twenty-first century
the viewpoint of vocational guidance continues to be present, but the task-settings are
broader and encourage the writers to ponder on entrepreneurship not only as a vocation but also as a mentality (Paakkunainen 2007; Korhonen, Komulainen, and Rty
2008). For example, the 2003 competition brochure makes mention, for the first time,
of the concept inner entrepreneurship.
At the time the competition was introduced, entrepreneurship education had not
yet been entered into the school curricula. The Good Enterprise! competition was
begun at a stage when young peoples attitudes towards work became objects of
special attention as the rapid economic growth was creating new trades and jobs
(Harinen 2000). At the beginning of the 1990s, Finland experienced an economic
crash. In the depression years, the special concern was the passivisation and displacement of young people (Harinen 2000). As a consequence of the economic crisis,
Finland shifted to new economic thinking, to market-driven policies (Kantola 2002).
After the depression, the educating of active, self-helping citizens and the increasing
of interaction between the school and economic life came to the fore, and in 1994,
entrepreneurship education was entered into the school curriculum as a new theme
(Finnish National Board of Education 1994; Gordon and Lahelma 2004). In 2004, the
Finnish Ministry of Education came out with an action plan for entrepreneurship
education, which extended entrepreneurship education to all school levels. The need
for entrepreneurship education was now justified by referring to the competitive
strength of Finland and the European Union: The Lisbon European Council in 2000
set the aim to develop the Union into the most competitive economy in the world. This
requires measures for promoting entrepreneurship (Finnish Ministry of Education
2004).
Participation in the competition is voluntary for the schools. If the school takes
part, then all 9th-graders, boys and girls alike, will write an essay. The pupils write the
essays in a mother-tongue class in Finnish or in Swedish, and the mother-tongue
teachers then select the best two essays from each class and send them to the competition. Pupils can write on one of the offered titles or make a title of their own. Every
year, the organisers have offered titles such as I will start that shop/salon/garage one
day, Should I become an entrepreneur? or My dream enterprise in the instructions.
However, the instructions and the titles offered are important and require an analysis
and discussion of their own; the writing of this is in its preparation stage.
Out of all narratives in our data sent to the competition, the proportion of girls
narratives is 76%. The high representation of girls could be partly explained by the
fact that in Finland girls do clearly better than boys, on average, in the mother tongue
(Finnish National Board of Education 2003). Achievements of school students are
regularly tested in core subjects. However, as Arnesen, Lahelma, and hrn (2008)
argue, outcomes are routinely classified by gender, which is an easy, taken-forgranted category. In Finland, categorisations by social class or ethnicity are not made

636

K. Komulainen et al.

as often, because they are regarded as more sensitive classifications. Moreover, differences in averages, for example the higher scores of girls than those of boys in some
tests, are easily interpreted so that every girl is better than every boy. On the other
hand, when selecting the best two essays from their class for the competition, the
teachers are acting as gate-holders for specific notions of entrepreneurship. Girls
conceptions of entrepreneurship may be closer to the teachers set of values. The final
selection of the prize-winning essays is made by a jury. The jury consists of representatives from the Foundation of Entrepreneurs, the National Board of Education, the
Centre for School Clubs, the Trade Union of Education in Finland, the Finnish Headmasters Association, the Mother-tongue Teachers Association, and the History
Teachers Association. The jury does not have a set of coherent and official criteria
for the selection at their disposal but the members each emphasise their own notions
of a good competition entry. However, the nature of the prize-winning essays informs
us not only about the notions, values and norms of entrepreneurship held by the
jury, the teachers and the school but also about the competition itself as a context of
writing. The descriptions of entrepreneurs the pupils give in their narratives are very
positive. The tone of the narratives is affected by the pupils possible desire to win the
competition and their striving to communicate that they value entrepreneurship.
In our analysis we firstly explored the myths contained in the narratives. Despite
the diversity, there is a finite number of basic story forms, myths that people tend to
adopt in trying to understand their lives. Frye (1957) distinguishes four mythic formulas: comedy, romance, tragedy, and satire. Comic plots, whether they are funny or not,
are about the ways people find happiness and stability in life by minimising the obstacles and constraints. The hero or heroine is typically an ordinary person in search of
the pure and simple pleasures of life. Success is achieved in romance, too, but in this
case it involves a more abstract victory of good over evil. In this myth, the focus is on
the individual hero/ine and his or her adventures in conquering the evil forces. It is
notable that in the scientific and commonsense understanding of entrepreneurship, the
entrepreneur is often presented as a mythic figure, a superhero with supernatural
powers (Ogbor 2000; Ahl 2002). Murray (1985) argues that in marked contrast to
comedy and romance, tragedy suggests a negative narrative tone. The ironic or satiric
myth attempts to sort out the shifting ambiguities and complexities of human existence. The ironic protagonist may be a fool or an antihero whose world manifests
itself as a puzzle with the solution forever withheld (Murray 1985). Secondly, we
focused on the romances and explored the kinds of gendered and classed representations of good selves and good, respectable lives created in the narratives. We
concentrated on the narrated traits, motives, abilities and physical features of the
entrepreneur, feelings associated with entrepreneurship, the threats to the business,
the signs of success, and the scenes of action. We assumed that these elements of the
narrative were connected to intimate and implicit areas of producing class and gender
(Skeggs 1997, 6).
The focus of the analysis romances of entrepreneurship
Among 1631 narratives there were 1533 (94%) stories that we identified as romances
or hero stories. The fact that a vast majority of the narratives are hero stories reflects
the influence of the competition as the context of writing. In hero stories, unlike tragedies or ironic narratives, entrepreneurship and its overtones of independence and
perseverance are promoted as good things (Ahl 2002).

Gender and Education

637

In our analysis, we distinguished two kinds of heroes: the modest entrepreneur and
the growth-oriented entrepreneur. These two kinds of heroes are pictured through two
kinds of interpretative frames. The distinction is based not only on the data but also
on economic and social psychological research on entrepreneurship: in economic
theories of entrepreneurship (cf. Vesala, Peura, and McElwee 2007; Stanworth and
Curran 1976), three dimensions are prominent: risk-taking, growth-orientation, and
innovativeness. The risk-taking dimension carries the assumption that an entrepreneur
takes a calculated economic risk but also maximises the profit. Growth-orientation
refers to the aim of maximising the profit by expanding the firm and its business activities. Innovativeness means the searching and developing of new products and
markets. The implicit expectation in all three dimensions is that a proper entrepreneur
is continuously engaged in an active, dynamic and competitive pursuit of economic
opportunity.
The pupils stories of the growth-oriented entrepreneur construct a representation
of the proper entrepreneur. In these stories it is the liberalist idea of markets, with its
principles of voluntary exchange and rational individual economic actors with profitmaximising motives, that serves as the interpretative frame through which the possible
entrepreneurial self is pictured. At the beginning of these narratives the protagonist
founds a small company with a feasible business idea. The successful timing of the
business, convenient markets, and the talents and efforts of the entrepreneur lead to
the expansion of the company and its business operations. In these stories, the threats
to the business are associated with the market forces such as rapid changes in stock
market prices. Along with self-actualisation, the aim and motive of entrepreneurship
is to gain fame, power, and status in social relations and to make a profit. Entrepreneurship is a step in the direction of upward mobility. The success stories describe the
entrepreneur as someone different from the ordinary wage-worker.
In the stories of the modest entrepreneur, the interpretative frame is the Protestant
work ethics with its values of hard work and frugality (Weber 1978). According to this
ethics, work is the basic human good, and the aims and motives of entrepreneurship
are not the accumulation of material wealth but the fulfilling of ones calling finding ones self and serving ones community, family, village, and nation. In these
stories the protagonist sets up a small company, such as a flower shop, thus employing
her/himself. The entrepreneur wants to settle down, and the home and the locality are
important for the protagonist. The stories describe everyday social relations and
duties. The entrepreneur is respectable, honest, and modest. The threats to the business
are non-normative life events such as sickness, burnout or drugs rather than market
mechanisms, personal incapacities, or inabilities.
Table 1 presents the classification of the romances into narratives of the modest
entrepreneur and those of the growth-oriented entrepreneur. The distribution into
narratives of the modest and of the growth-oriented entrepreneur was strongly related
with the writers gender. In the unrewarded stories, the modest entrepreneur was
described by 78% of the girls and 43% of the boys, whereas the growth-oriented entrepreneur was pictured by 22% of the girls and 57% of the boys. In the prize-winning
stories, modest entrepreneurship was pictured by 81% of the girls and 68% of the
boys, whereas growth-oriented entrepreneurship was pictured by 19% of the girls and
32% of the boys.
On the basis of the above figures we can conclude that the proportions of the two
types of entrepreneur are about the same in both unrewarded and prize-winning
stories by girls. In other words, a majority of the unrewarded stories by girls describe

638

K. Komulainen et al.

Table 1. Classification of the romances into narratives of the modest and the growth-oriented
entrepreneur.
Unrewarded romances
Modest
Girls

925
86%/78%
Boys
148
14%/43%
Total
1073
100%/70%

Growth-oriented
264
57%/22%
196
43%/57%
460
100%/30%

Prize-winning romances
Total

Modest

1189
86
78%/100% 70%/81%
344
36
22%/100% 30%/68%
1533
122
100%/100% 100%/77%

Growth-oriented

Total

20
54%/19%
17
46%/32%
37
100%/23%

106
67%/100%
53
33%/100%
159
100%/100%

Note: The notation x%/y% means that x% (respectively y%) of all narratives in the relevant column
(respectively row) belong to this subcategory.

the modest entrepreneur, and an equal proportion of the prize-winning stories by

girls do the same. But as regards the stories by boys, the decisions of the jury seem
to exert an influence on the type of entrepreneur that is described in the boys stories
that the jury rewards. In boys writings the jury favours the descriptions of the
modest entrepreneur, which account for 43% of the unrewarded stories but as many
as 68% of the prize-winning ones. Boys stories of the growth-oriented entrepreneur
are not rewarded to the same extent, for they account for 57% of the unrewarded
writings but only 32% of the prize-winning ones. We will reflect on this finding in
the conclusion.
The most popular five business ideas of girls in their modest entrepreneur stories
concern the domains of cafeterias/restaurants/catering, tourism, animal care, nursing,
and agriculture, as shown in Table 2. They emphasise the domestic skills in their
stories of the growth-oriented entrepreneur, too; they picture themselves becoming
growth-oriented entrepreneurs especially in the field of textiles, i.e. as fashion designers and owners of fashion houses. The most popular fields in boys stories are engineering, leisure-time services (such as having a sporting equipment store), information
technology, tourism, media/entertainment services, and utopian innovations. While
the growth-oriented entrepreneur in the boys stories works in technological fields, the
modest male entrepreneur is a farmer or an artisan. When comparing the prizewinning narratives with the unrewarded ones, we found no differences among the
fields of entrepreneurship.
According to Vainio-Korhonen (2002), female entrepreneurs in Finland and in
other Nordic countries have operated in the domestic sectors until the present day, and
womens businesses have always been characterised by small size. Vainio-Korhonen
argues that although Finnish women have achieved the freedom to trade and an access
to all training courses and occupations, the clear division of the society into male and
female realms seems to remain unchanged. The pupils narratives do not question the
division into male and female realms, either. While the home and the family shape and
orient the girls business ideas, the boys interpret entrepreneurship as an activity
outside the home and in contrast to domesticity. Moreover, the boys narrate more
often than the girls about growth-oriented entrepreneurship and describe how they
expand their businesses, lead their companies, and beat their competitors. Besides
leadership and profit-making, the signs of success include signs of heterosexual
masculinity such as having a good-looking secretary (Mulholland 1996). Next, we

Cafeteria/restaurant/bakery/catering
Tourism/accommodation
Agriculture/forestry
Leisure-time services
Animal care/breeding
Care/nursing, domestic help
Grocery store/merchandise
Engineering/mechanics/manufacturing
Textile industry, selling/designing clothes
Arts (actor, author, musician)
Utopian innovations
Book store/flower shop/interior design
Media/entertainment services
Expert/specialist
Artisan crafts
Information technology
Beauty care/styling
Transport
Total

141
93
89
44
103
93
71
21
48
52
12
51
22
16
24
6
30
9
925 (78%)

Modest
29
32
6
31
6
4
5
17
37
13
28
14
13
17
3
6
3
0
264 (22%)

Growth-oriented

Girls (N = 1189)

170
125
95
75
109
97
76
38
85
65
40
65
35
33
27
12
33
9
1189 (78%)

Total
7
12
25
17
3
1
17
19
0
5
1
1
13
1
17
5
1
3
148 (43%)

Modest
11
18
2
27
1
1
5
34
1
1
27
0
15
15
3
30
0
5
196 (57%)

Growth-oriented

Boys (N = 344)

18
30
27
44
4
2
22
53
1
6
28
1
28
16
20
35
1
8
344 (22%)

Total

Classification of the romances of the modest and growth-oriented entrepreneur according to their field and the writers gender.

Imagined field of entrepreneurship

Table 2.

188
155
122
119
113
99
98
91
86
71
68
66
62
49
47
47
34
17
1533 (100%)

Grand total

Gender and Education

639

640

K. Komulainen et al.

illustrate our analysis with narratives that are rich in the characteristics we have
identified as relating to the modest entrepreneur and the growth-oriented entrepreneur. The narratives have been abridged in the English translation.
The model stories of entrepreneurship masculinity in the romances of the
growth-oriented entrepreneur
More than half (57%) of the boys have a coherent entrepreneur story to tell that fits in
well with the cultural ideals and values of proper entrepreneurship: because entrepreneurship is supposed to be the engine of economic growth, a large firm is regarded as
better than a small one and a fast-growing firm as better than a bread-and-butter one.
Firms in high-tech and manufacturing are better than those in retail and services because
they are more likely to grow big (see also Ahl 2002). In other words, entrepreneurship
is assessed in terms of size, growth, profit, and the industrial sector involved. In the
following story, the entrepreneur is placed in the high-tech sector, and the growth and
profit of the firm are the criteria for assessing the writers entrepreneurial acumen.
My Firm is a Part of Me
WOLF.group (Wireless Opinion for Life) produces different kinds of IT services. It is
distinguished from the competition by its versatility. WOLF.group aims to create a
professional but still rather relaxed and pleasant picture of itself. For the work force, a
lot of different kinds of professionals will be needed who have the ambition and creativity to produce something totally new and magnificent. My vision for the future of
WOLF.group would be that our locales and services would spread throughout Finland
and the neighbouring countries. Leadership involves a lot of responsibility. You have to
be able to see to the future and envision it. I clearly have leadership qualities. I do not let
other people tell me what to do but I am good at taking other peoples needs into account.
I am proud of WOLF.group, my idea, and it will be wonderful to see from my directors
chair how it becomes the biggest and most popular producer of IT services in the Nordic
countries.

The boys imagine their possible selves through the lens of the liberalist marketplace
more often than the girls, and their protagonist is a rational economic agent, Homo
economicus. As the story My firm is a part of me illustrates, a majority of the boys
locate their imagined economic action in public national and global venues. Being an
entrepreneur requires a distance from immobility, femininity, and place-bound
domesticity (cf. Skeggs 2004, 50). Moreover, being an entrepreneur means being selfreliant, creative, competitive, willing to take risks, and having a strong personality
with leadership qualities and ambition.
According to Connell (2005), hegemonic forms of masculinity are historically
derived from the growth of industrial capitalism and imperialism. Although bourgeois
masculinities produced by these processes have many variations, they share some key
features: association with authority, social conservatism, compulsory heterosexuality,
integration with a familial division of labour, strongly marked symbolic gender
differences, and an emotional distance between women and men. Even if the boys
tend to challenge some of the traditional meanings of bourgeois masculinity in their
growth-oriented narratives, the distinction between women and men remains: in the
boys narratives, the world of information technology is masculine. However, the
authoritarianism and social conservatism associated with paternal entrepreneurship

Gender and Education

641

are rejected (Reed 1996). Instead of viewing their possible selves as distant and
authoritarian, the boys frequently imagine equality and companionship at the workplace. The boys also reject the old-style business masculinity and the social conservatism associated with it. In the boys narratives, information technology is the
technology of young, well-educated, and wealthy white men (Vehvilinen 2001). The
image of the entrepreneur that the boys wish to convey is a young dynamic person
with a sense of relaxed superiority and the ability to look at things afresh and to transform them (Connell 2005).
Heroic men working for the fatherland and family
In the boys model stories, technical superiority is a sign of masculinity. The meaning
of machines and technology is significantly different, however, for middle-class and
working-class masculinity: in the narratives that reflect middle-class masculinity, men
are the masters of machines through their logical-mathematical skills which are
culturally seen as manifestations of rationality, inborn giftedness, and intelligence
(Rty et al. 2002). In the narratives of growth-oriented entrepreneurship, machines are
mastered without physical strength. In the narratives that construct working-class
masculinity, in contrast, the power over the machine symbolises the strength and
toughness of the person. The following story illustrates how technical artefacts
become a part of the identity of a man, making the machine a symbolic extension of
him (Mellstm 2004). At any rate, technological skills and interaction with machines
produce pleasure for men in both cultures.
A Hero Story
The sound of a hydraulic pump is heard in the woods and the red cabin of the harvester
can be seen moving among the pine trunks. I slap my steel fist on the trunk of a pine and
a sharp screech fells the tree. Here, under the Northern star, everyone has to get their
bread where they can. Here nature determines what kind of crop people get to harvest.
My father was a lumberjack all his life. Wood has been floated or driven from the forest
with a horse. Many a drop of sweat and blood has been shed so that the wives at home
should have flour to bake bread for the children. I have worked as an entrepreneur all my
life. In the same role of lumberjack as my father but a little better equipped. And when
I walk my ultra modern six-legged harvester, something moves in my heart. You feel like
you are the hero of this society. A lonely rider, an entrepreneur, who is one of the pillars
of the society. The independence of this country was mainly determined in the forest.
The welfare of this country has been created with the wood from the forest.

According to Pys (1997), the old-time lumberjack (jtk in Finnish) working in

Finnish forests has become a dominant cultural theme in the popular imagination.
Even today, Finnish literature, film, and popular songs draw from the idealised jtk
image with its idealised characteristics of the masculine, independent, hard-working,
honest fellow. As a Finnish cultural hero, the jtk emerges as a symbol of masculine
power, integrity, and positively valued frontier mentality. The jtk folklore has
engendered two cultural stereotypes the small farm owner with a family to support
and the carefree wandering bachelor.
The protagonist in the narratives of modest male entrepreneurship strongly resembles the heroic jtk. As the above story illustrates, however, the boys narratives
exclude the carefree wandering bachelor type, which carries overtones of sexuality,

642

K. Komulainen et al.

hedonism, and a sense of otherness. Instead, they create respectable selves in their
stories by stressing the importance of generational continuity and the breadwinning
role of men. In these stories, hard-working males are idealised and sanctified by
connecting their work to the fatherland and family. Ultimately, these men work for the
whole nation.

The caring self

The stories of modest entrepreneurs reflect common ideals and norms of the respectable and proper citizen rather than just the ideals of the market. Respectability is,
however, gender-specific. In their narratives of the modest female entrepreneur, the
girls substantially describe the abilities and dispositions that are seen, according to
Skeggs (1997, 68), as essential to the caring self: kind and loving, warm and friendly,
reliable, gentle, patient, clean and tidy. In the following story, entrepreneurship is
described as coming straight from the heart.
Entrepreneurship Straight from the Heart
It started with a newspaper advert: the idea of starting my own business, day care
places were sought for young children. I had graduated as a nanny and was looking for
a job that would correspond to my occupation. Because my husband showed a green
light even at the thought, I was ecstatic. I would be able to work at home. I decided to
go see a business counsellor the following day. The counsellor was happy that I was
planning to start my own day care centre, and in that way the day care issues could be
organised differently in our town. Today my day care centre employs five people
besides myself. My day care centre immediately got a good clientele and I have already
paid back my bank loan. When I realised that I wanted a day care centre of my own, I
knew that it would always be a part of me. It would bring out my great love of
children. The day care centre looks just like me; the atmosphere is loving, warm and
homely. It is important to realise your own entrepreneurship and it must come straight
from the heart.

In this story, the protagonist sees engagement in caring practices as a fundamental

characteristic of the female enterprising self. In the girls narratives in general, the
caring and serving role, which includes moral responsibility, gives the female protagonist status, self-worth and pleasure (cf. Skeggs 1997). The narratives of the modest
female entrepreneur steer clear of the masculine, rational, risk-taking and profitseeking entrepreneur (Nadin 2007). The middle-class caring and serving femininity,
located in the spheres of the home and domesticity, is perceived as cultural and
emotional capital that is productised through entrepreneurship.
Bourdieu (1986) argues that the dimensions, shapes and forms of the body
(expressed through treating it, caring for it, and maintaining it) reveal the deepest
dispositions of a class and gender. In their narratives of the modest entrepreneur, the
girls construct not only a caring and serving self but also a body that fits into the sign
system of the caring self: the body, too, is to be taken care of (Skeggs 1997, 102). The
protagonists body is a sign-wearing body above all. It represents the protagonists
inner character: investments in bodily appearance, such as dressing and makeup, are
significant descriptors of the caring and respectable self. Thus the practices of looking
good and proper are not trivial but central to constructing the sense and image of the
caring self.

Gender and Education

643

However, physical appearance has to be coded in the correct way: too much concentration on appearance is seen as a sign of female deviancy (Skeggs 1997, 99104).
Bodily practices are sites of both pleasure and fear: they enable the caring entrepreneur
to display her caring character, but they also entail the fear of becoming viewed as an
arrogant and self-centred person. The girls emphasise in their stories that an entrepreneur should not differ too much from her clients in bodily appearance and behaviour.
On the contrary, she should be at the same level and always be easily approachable.
I the Young Entrepreneur
It is nice to start the day fresh and clean, and the customers would not dare to approach
a service person that was lurking under a layer of dust, either. I do not wear a lot of
makeup; I just put on some mascara and lip gloss. I look good, I think. Clean but not
overly done. Our shop is fresh the wallpaper is light blue, the ceiling dark blue with a
starry sky. Luckily we learned customer service and counselling at school. You just have
to remember to smile and be helpful. A young entrepreneur should be happy, nice,
competent, and friendly, and above all, she should know what she is doing. I think I am
just like that.

Having a good and sophisticated taste in clothing and in decorating and styling her
working environment are regarded as important for the caring and serving female
entrepreneur. By observing these she moves away from the vulgar and the sexual,
which have historically been seen as tasteless and associated with working-class femininity (Skeggs 1997, 100). In the girls stories, a significant difference is drawn
between looking feminine and looking sexy: the caring and serving entrepreneur
desires to be viewed as a pleasant and charming but restrained person, not as a sex
object.
Glamorous feminine entrepreneurship
Femininity is a discursive position available through gender relations that women are
encouraged to inhabit and use (Skeggs 1997, 10). In the competition, the girls inhabit
not only the caring and serving middle-class femininity but also the glamorous femininity pictured through the lens of the markets. In the girls stories of the growthoriented entrepreneur, the female entrepreneur is no longer located in the spheres of
the home and domesticity but acts in the global markets. The field of the growthoriented female entrepreneur is most often fashion. In this field, femininity is a form
of cultural and psychological capital. Fashion offers an imaginary space where it is
possible and acceptable to combine femininity, sexuality and desirability.
Moonlight
Now, Katariina, I want to tell you about the history of the enterprise you are about to take
over. When I was 25 I had the desire to start a clothing company. I wanted to design fine
evening gowns and sell them. I decided to start my own business. I wanted the space to
be pleasant and soft but at the same time elegant. I felt an enormous sense of success, for
the first step towards realising my dream had been taken. The boutique did surprisingly
well. I got married. Even when pregnant, I did not want to stay at home. Your mother
was born a few months after the second boutique opened. A few years passed until I felt
the urge to conquer again. I wanted to conquer Paris, that magnificent city where fashion

644

K. Komulainen et al.

flourishes and is appreciated. Henna and I closed both my boutiques for a week, and we
made an agreement on business premises. The boutique is still located at the Galleries
Lafayette shopping centre, which is held in high esteem. Years sped past running the
three boutiques. I travelled a lot between them and was happy with the results. Then
something surprising happened that I was not ready for. I realised that my children were
nearly adults. I had been working all through their childhood and deprived them of their
mother! I promised myself and my whole family that I would hire more employees. Ever
since that decision we spent our holidays together in Paris, and the whole family fell in
love with it.

If the signs of success in the boys stories of the growth-oriented entrepreneur are
leadership and profit-making, in the girls stories it is glamour. Their fantasies of
elegance and sophistication demonstrate a drawing away from the working class and
emulation of the middle class (Skeggs 1997). Glamour is also a way of transcending
the banalities of the caring and serving entrepreneurial femininity that renders women
passive objects, mere signs of appearance without a strong agency. Through glamour,
the girls present themselves as active and autonomous individuals making choices.
In the girls success stories, the glamorous middle-class entrepreneurial femininity
offers a space for hedonism, autonomy, camaraderie, pleasure and fun, but it also
generates insecurities. Even if glamour challenges the banalities of femininity, it is a
contradictory subject position. As Skeggs (1997, 110) points out, glamour is always
regarded as degrading unless protected and defended by other marks of middleclass respectability, such as proper motherhood. In the boys stories of the growthoriented entrepreneur, the protagonist is separate and detached from private life and
domesticity. In the girls stories of proper entrepreneurship, the protagonist is also a
spouse and a mother who takes care of her family. The criteria of the good self and
good life require that they combine glamorous femininity with motherhood.

Conclusion
The conventional theory of entrepreneurship is justified in terms of its appeal to a free
market system, the capitalist state, and the rather utopian goal of economic freedom
for everyone (Ogbor 2000). However, the idea of a neutral market, a market where
everybody competes from an equal position, needs to be questioned. Instead of discursively neutralising capitalism, we see the market not as a neutral playing field but as
an already divided historical entity, premised upon classification with historically
generated value, into which we enter with differential access to different types of
resources (Skeggs 2004). Being gendered and classed, the market shapes individual
interest and engagement in the practices of entrepreneurship.
According to Connell (2005), neo-liberalism can function as a form of masculinity
politics largely because of the powerful role of the state in the gender order. The state
constitutes the gender relation in multiple ways, and all of its gender policies affect
men. Many mainstream policies (e.g. in economic and security affairs) are substantially about men without acknowledging it. Although the entrepreneur is presented as
gender-neutral in policy documents such as the Report on Education and Training for
Entrepreneurship by the European Commission (2004), the entrepreneur is a masculine construction that sets the norm whereby feminine characteristics are excluded
from the ideals of the proper entrepreneur, and simultaneously bourgeois values and
personality dispositions, such as profit-seeking and the need for achievement, are
justified as bases for entrepreneurial citizenship (Komulainen 2006).

Gender and Education

645

According to our findings from the entrepreneurial writing competition, the pupils
try on the middle-class version of the self, where the person is not contingent upon
external effects but an autonomous self-governing individual. As a pedagogical tool
for educating enterprising citizens, the competition emphasises individual entrepreneurial initiative, flexibility, self-reliance and self-responsibility, and challenges the
routine, rule-following behaviour demanded by Fordist production. Not all imagined
selves, however, are equally valued in the markets. Entrepreneurship education offers
boys and girls different and unequal subject positions to be tried on. Boys possible
selves match the culturally shared and valued representations of the proper entrepreneurial individual more closely than the self-representations of girls do. Boys have an
access and entitlement to a range of powerful narratives of entrepreneurship that
resource their self-making. In their growth-oriented narratives boys do not question
their access to power. Although girls also imagine growth-oriented entrepreneurship
within the interpretative frames of free markets, they do not have an access to the same
discourses as boys for the production of their enterprising selves (cf. Skeggs 2005).
Being a woman and an entrepreneur at the same time means that one has had to position oneself simultaneously in regard to two conflicting sets of discourses those of
femininity and those of entrepreneurship. Ahl (2002, 133) argues that the discourses
of femininity exclude growth-oriented entrepreneurship and that men are culturally
perceived to be more entrepreneurial than women. Women are rated lower on leadership, autonomy, risk-taking propensity, readiness for change, endurance, and a low
need for support. The cultural model stories of female entrepreneurs function as
resources for girls to construct their possible selves in the competition. These model
stories marginalise women as economic actors and offer them such subject positions
as leave them without a strong agency.
According to McDowell (2000), the new forms of work open to working-class
pupils (both male and female) are located in the service sector. Such employment
demands deference to superiors and clients, polite behaviour, cleanness, subdued
dress and bodily presentation, and the personal skills of pleasant social interaction.
Walkerdine (2003) argues that such demands of the new labour market can be understood as aiming to produce a subject in the image of the middle class. In the writing
competition, most of the narratives are written about the field of service-sector
entrepreneurship. In their narratives, the girls describe their essential nature as being
a serving person. The product service and caring is seen as inseparable from their
beings as persons and entrepreneurs. McDowell (2000) argues that young workingclass men may find themselves disadvantaged in this kind of interactive work.
Neither do the masculinities pictured in our data fit into the attributes of the new
service-sector labour. The masculinities pictured in the boys stories are more reminiscent of the traditional working-class masculinities. However, even if working-class
masculinities do not provide as powerful subject positions as their imagined middleclass counterparts do, both types of entrepreneurial masculinities are compatible with
capital accumulation (see also Mulholland 1996). In comparison to the imagined
masculinities, the female entrepreneurs in the narratives (as in real life) are secondclass citizens when it comes to access and entry into the resources and profits of
entrepreneurship.
As we stated above, the majority (77%) of the girls and boys prize-winning
romances were stories of the modest entrepreneur. The heroism in these stories
highlights common moral virtues and the qualities of the respectable citizen, such as
diligence, honesty, and self-responsibility. Historically, the virtues of modesty have

646

K. Komulainen et al.

been essential in the process of socialisation at school, and they have been offered to
pupils from working-class and lower middle-class families (Koski 2001). In the
writing competition, portrayals of possible selves that associate entrepreneurship with
risk-taking and profit-seeking and locate it in the global markets are not regarded as
desirable as pictures of the virtues of modesty. This finding of ours is at odds with the
fact that it is the growth-oriented entrepreneurial action that is pursued in the policy
documents of the European Union and the Commission and in the textbooks of
entrepreneurship education (Komulainen 2006).
Koski (2008) has explored the differences and similarities between the curricula of
the Finnish vocational school and the upper secondary school (gymnasium) in regard
to education for entrepreneurship. She finds that academic and vocational studies have
different moral aims: the enterprising self constructed in the vocational curriculum
is founded on the traditional Protestant ideal of duty. The aim of education for entrepreneurship is to imbue the student with such qualifications that she or he will become
a resourceful, dutiful, courageous and inventive worker, craftsman or entrepreneur
who values his/her work. The aim of entrepreneurship studies in the gymnasium, in
contrast, is to educate the pupils into participatory, responsible and critical citizens
who contribute to the local, national, European and global levels of society. Koski
(2008) concludes that the pupils in the gymnasiums are offered tools to become somebody while the ideal vocational pupil is expected to become an obedient worker. The
goal for the former category of pupils is to participate in the reformation of society,
and for the latter, to adapt to changes.
Following Koski (2008), we suggest that the large representation of narratives of
the modest entrepreneur and the rewarding of these narratives in the competition
reflect ambivalent and class- and gender-specific underpinnings in the education for
entrepreneurship: in its effort to educate children into good citizens, the Finnish
comprehensive school strives to equip them all with the entrepreneurial attitudes,
abilities and skills of responsibility, flexibility and diligence that are required for
adaptation into the postmodern labour market. As the service sector expands, the
Nordic welfare state is dismantled, and the care services are privatised, workingclass and middle-class women, too, need attitudes and skills pertaining to service
and care entrepreneurship. We assume that the kind of innovative, risk-taking expert
entrepreneurship that reforms the society and secures the nations competitive
power is reserved for males that opt for academic education in the technological
fields.
It is noteworthy, though, that it is the modest-entrepreneur narratives of boys that
are most likely to be rewarded in the competition (see Table 1). We therefore
assume that entrepreneurial education at the comprehensive school is meant for
those boys in particular that are thought to be at the risk of being displaced from the
postmodern labour market, which requires skills seen to be feminine (see WeaverHightower 2003). Underachieving boys, who do not like school and do not necessarily do well in academic studies but are considered to have the kind of courage and
inventiveness that is required of entrepreneurs, are often considered to need such
education (Komulainen 2006; Lahelma 2005). In entrepreneurial education these
boys get respect, whereas mainstream comprehensive education, which rewards
adaptability, is thought to serve academically oriented boys and, in particular, girls
better. We are in the process of interviewing comprehensive-school teachers of
entrepreneurship at the moment, and our provisional analysis of these interviews
supports the above conclusions.

Gender and Education

647

References
Ahl, H. 2002. The making of the female entrepreneur. A discourse analysis of research texts
on womens entrepreneurship. Jnkping International Business School Dissertation
Series, no. 015. Jnkping, Sweden: Jnkping International Business School.
Anthias, F. 2001. Social stratification and social inequality: Models of intersectionality and
identity. In Rethinking class, culture, identities and lifestyles, ed. F. Devine, M. Savage,
M. Scott, and R. Crompton, 2444. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Antikainen, A. 2006. In search of the Nordic model in education. Scandinavian Journal of
Educational Policy 50: 22943.
Arnesen, A.-L., E. Lahelma, and E. hrn. 2008. Travelling discourses on gender and education. The case of boys underachievement. Nordisk Pedagogik 28, no. 1: 114.
Bourdieu, P. 1986. Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. London: Routledge.
Bruni, A., S. Gerhardi, and B. Poggio. 2004. Entrepreneur-mentality, gender and the study of
women entrepreneurs. Journal of Organizational Change and Management 17: 25668.
Center for School Clubs. 2008. Historia [History]. http://www.kerhokeskus.fi/index.php
(accessed April 2008).
Connell, R.W. 2005. Globalization and business masculinities. Men and Masculinities 7:
34764.
European Commission. 2004. Final report of the expert group Education for Entrepreneurship.
http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/entrepreneurship/support_measures/training_education/doc/
entrepreneurship_education_final_en.pdf (accessed November 2007).
European Commission. 2006. Entrepreneurship action plan. Key action sheets. Key action 1
Fostering entrepreneurial mindsets through school education. http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/
entrepreneurship/action_plan/index.htm (accessed November 2007).
Finnish Ministry of Education. 2004. Policy for entrepreneurship education. Publications of
the Ministry of Education, no. 18. Helsinki: Ministry of Education. http://www.minedu.fi/
export/sites/default/OPM/Julkaisut/2004/liitteet/opm_169_opm18.pdf?lang=fi (accessed
November 2007).
Finnish Ministry of Trade and Industry. 2004. Naisyrittjyys. Nykytilanne ja toimepide-ehdotuksia [Female entrepreneurship. The present situation and the proposals for development].
Helsinki: Ministry of Trade and Industry. http://www.ktm.fi/files/15023/
Naisyrittajyys040105.pdf (accessed November 2007).
Finnish National Board of Education. 1994. Framework curriculum for the comprehensive
school 1994. Helsinki: Painatuskeskus.
Finnish National Board of Education. 2003. Tiedotteet 2003 [Announcement 2003]. Seitsemsluokkalaisten lukutaito melko hyv, kirjoittamisessa puutteita. http://www.oph.fi/
SubPage.asp?path=1,436,24368,31620 (accessed May 2008).
Finnish National Board of Education. 2007. Yrittjyyskasvatus [Entrepreneurship education].
http://www.edu.fi/yrittajyys/ (accessed November 2007).
Foucault, M. 1991. Governmentality. In The Foucault effect. Studies in governmentality with
two lectures by and an interview with Michel Foucault, ed. G. Burchell, C. Gordon, and
P. Miller, 87104. London: Harverster Wheatsheaf.
Frye, N. 1957. Anatomy of criticism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Gibb, A. 2002. In pursuit of a new enterprise and entrepreneurship paradigm for learning:
Creative destruction, new values of doing things and new combinations of knowledge.
International Journal of Management Reviews 4: 23369.
Gordon, T., and E. Lahelma. 2004. Etnografinen katse koulutuspolitiikkaan [An ethnographical
gaze on educational policy]. Kasvatus, The Finnish Journal of Education 35, no. 1: 6678.
Hnninen, V. 1999. Sisinen tarina, elm ja muutos [Inner story, life and change]. Acta
Universitatis Tamperensis, no. 696. Tampere, Finland: University of Tampere.
Harinen, P. 2000. Valmiiseen tulleet: Tutkimus nuoruudesta, kansallisuudesta ja kansalaisuudesta [A study of youth, nationality and citizenship]. Helsinki: Nuorisotutkimusseura.
Hjorth, D., and C. Steyart, 2004. Introduction. In Narrative and discursive approaches in
entrepreneurship, ed. D. Hjorth, and C. Steyart, 17. Cheltenham and Northampton, MA:
Edward Elgar.
Hytti, U., and C. OGorman, 2004. What is enterprise education? An analysis of the
objectives and methods of enterprise education programmes in four European countries.
Education & Training 46, no. 1: 1123.

648

K. Komulainen et al.

Kantola, A. 2002. Markkinakuri ja managerivalta. Poliittinen hallinta Suomen 1990-luvun

talouskriisiss. [Market discipline and managerial power. Finnish political governance
during Finnish economic crisis on the 1990s]. Tampere, Finland: Loki-kirjat.
Komulainen, K. 2006. Neoliberal educational policy. A case study of Finnish textbooks of
entrepreneurial education. Nordisk Pedagogik 26: 21228.
Korhonen, M., K. Komulainen, and H. Rty. 2008. Tyhn liittyv sankaruus nuorten yrittjyystarinoissa [The heroism of work in the narratives of young people]. Tyelmn
tutkimus [Finnish Journal of Work Research] 2, 3043.
Koski, L. 2001. Hyvn lapsen ja kasvattamisen ideaalit: Tutkimus aapisen ja lukukirjojen
moraalisen kosmologian muutoksista itsenisyyden aikana [The ideals of good child and
education: The changing moral orders in educational stories in ABC Books]. Turku,
Finland: Suomen Kasvatustieteellisen Seura, tutkimuksia 6.
Koski, L. 2008. Vocational curriculum Morality for the working class? In Knowing
work. The social relations of working and knowing, ed. M. Weil, L. Koski, and L.
Mjelde, 1223. Bern: Peter Lang.
Lahelma, E. 2005. School grades and other resources: The failing boys discourse revisited.
NORA, Nordic Journal of Womens Studies 13, no. 2: 7889.
Lahelma, E., and E. hrn. 2003. Strong Nordic Women in the making? Gender policies and
classroom practices. In Democratic education. Ethnographic challenges, ed. D. Beach, T.
Gordon, and E. Lahelma, 3951. London: The Tufnell Press.
Markus, H., and P. Nurius. 1986. Possible selves. American Psychologist 41: 95669.
McDowell, L. 2000. Learning to serve? Employment aspirations and attitudes of young working class men in an era of labor market restructuring. Gender, Place and Culture: Journal
of Feminist Geography 7: 389416.
Mellstm, U. 2004. Machines and masculine subjectivity: Technology as an integral part of
mens lives experiences. Men and Masculinities 6: 36882.
Mulholland, K. 1996. Entrepreneurialism, masculinities and the self-made man. In Men as
managers, managers as men: Critical perspectives on men, masculinities and managements, ed. D. L. Collinson, and J. Hearn, 12349. London: Sage.
Murray, K. 1985. Life as fiction. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 15: 17388.
Nadin, S. 2007. Entrepreneurial identity in the care sector: Navigating the contradictions.
Women in Management Review 22: 45667.
Ogbor, J. 2000. Mythicizing and reification in entrepreneurial discourse: Ideology-critique of
entrepreneurial studies. Journal of Management Studies 37: 60535.
Olssen, M., J. Codd, and A.-M. ONeill. 2004. Educational policy: Globalization, citizenship
and democracy. London: Sage.
Paakkunainen, K. 2007. Alkaisinko yrittjksi? Tutkimus nuorten yrittjyyspoliittisista
kirjoituksista ja asenteista [Would I be an entrepreneur? A study of attitudes towards
entrepreneurship among young people]. Yksityisyrittjin Sti Kerhokeskus koulutyn tuki Nuorisotutkimusverkosto: Verkkojulkaisuja 11.
Popkewitz, T., and P. Lindblad. 2004. Historicizing the future: Educational reform, systems of
reason, and the making of children who are the future citizens. Journal of Educational
Change 5: 22947.
Pys, J. 1997. Jtkn synty: Tutkimus sosiaalisen kategorian muotoutumisesta suomalaisessa
kulttuurissa ja itsuomalaisessa metstyperinteess [The birth of the lumberjack. The
historical formation of a social category in Finnish culture and Eastern Finnish lumbering
folklore]. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seuran toimituksia 669.
Rty, H., and L. Snellman. 1998. Social representations of educability. Social Psychology of
Education 1: 35973.
Rty, H., J. Vnsk, K. Kasanen, and R. Krkkinen. 2002. Parents explanations of their
childs performance in mathematics and reading: A replication and extension of Yee and
Eccles. Sex Roles 46, nos. 34: 1217.
Rty, H., K. Kasanen, and R. Krkkinen. 2006. Schools subjects as social categorizations.
Social Psychology of Education 9, no. 1: 525.
Reay, D. 2006. The zombie stalking English schools: Social class and educational inequality.
British Journal of Educational Studies 54: 288307.
Reed, R. 1996. Entrepreneurialism and paternalism in Australian management: A gender
critique of the self-made man. In Men as managers, managers as men: Critical

Gender and Education

649

perspectives on men, masculinities and managements, ed. D. L. Collinson and J. Hearn,

99122. London: Sage.
Rose, N. 1992. Governing the enterprising self. In The values of the enterprise culture. The
moral debate, ed. P. Heelas and P. Morris, 14164. London: Routledge.
Simola, H., R. Rinne, and J. Kivirauma. 2002. Abdication of the education state or just shifting responsibilities? The appearance of a new system of reason in constructing educational governance and social exclusion/inclusion in Finland. Scandinavian Journal of
Educational Research 46: 24764.
Skeggs, B. 1997. Formations of class and gender: Becoming respectable. London: Sage.
Skeggs, B. 2004. Class, self, culture. London and New York: Routledge.
Skeggs, B. 2005. The making of class and gender through visualizing moral subject formation. Sociology 39: 96582.
Stanworth, M.J.K., and J. Curran. 1976. Growth and the small firm An alternative view. The
Journal of Management Studies 13, no. 2: 95110.
Thiel, D. 2007. Class in construction: London building workers, dirty work and physical
cultures. The British Journal of Sociology 58: 22751.
Walkerdine, V. 2003. Reclassifying upward mobility: Femininity and the neo-liberal subject.
Gender and Education 15: 23748.
Weaver-Hightower, M. 2003. The boy turn in research on gender and education. Review of
Educational Research 73: 47198.
Weber, M. 1978. The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. London: Allen & Unwin.
Willis, P.E. 1978. Learning to labour: How working-class kids get working-class jobs.
Farnborough, UK: Saxon House.
Vainio-Korhonen, K. 2002. Ruokaa, vaatteita, hoivaa: Naiset ja yrittjyys paikallisena ja
yleisen ilmin 1700-luvulta nykypivn [Food, clothes, care Finnish female entrepreneurs from 1750 to the present-day]. Helsinki: SKS, Historiallisia tutkimuksia 213.
Vehvilinen, M. 2001. Gender and computing in retrospect: The case of Finland. IEEE Annals
of the History of Computing 21, no. 2: 4451.
Vesala, K.M., J. Peura, and G. McElwee. 2007. The split entrepreneurial identity of the
farmer. Journal of Business and Enterprise Development 14, no. 1: 4863.

Copyright of Gender & Education is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to
multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users
may print, download, or email articles for individual use.