Gender and Entrepreneurship as a Career Choice: Do Self-assessments of Ability Matter

Review “Gender and Entrepreneurship as a Career Choice: Do Self-assessments of Ability Matter?”
   Amazon.com 
   I quite appreciate the former part of this research report, which is about the inner relationship among the three elements that the writer is discussing: social beliefs about gender, self-assessment and entrepreneurship. Without complicated data and statistics, I can easily understand the logic that the author wanna say, that is affected by general cultural stereotypes about different sexes, people will evaluate themselves based on the criteria of society, and this will influence their career choice (whether they would like to choose to start a new business or just apply for jobs). And I quite appreciate the consideration of the author about manifesting unclear definition, concept or scale like this one: “I define an entrepreneur as a person who currently, alone or with others, is either trying to start his or her own new business of is already a business owner”, or this one “Next I consider financial resources with a basic measure of household income bracket that is calculated by Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data technicians.” 
But unfortunately, I am not able to understand the models the author used in her research. Though Sarah mentions the modeling techniques she uses is standard logistic regression and addresses which model prove what hypothesis (she put forward 4 hypotheses). For example, she says that “Model 2 includes an interaction effect between sex and education level to investigate the possibility that women hold themselves to a stricter standard of entrepreneurial ability than men do.” But I can’t get the accurate and concrete information about model 2. I don't know how her models were built and how she concluded results. That’s really confusing! With such long a discussion and analysis, Sarah’s conclusion of the whole research is just a paragraph. I don’t think it’s enough to conclude the whole research.
   Well, I still think this research is good coz it does a little breakthrough since the writer investigates people in the earliest stage of entrepreneurship. :)
Academic review
   With rapid social development, the status of both genders has been gradually balanced and gender gap or we can say gender discrimination is diminished by degree. However, since sexual inequality still exists, women’s structural disadvantages which regards “human, network, and financial resources in the overall population” (Thébaud 290), influence their decision in entrepreneurship. The author of this research report, Sarah Thébaud, a student from Cornell University, focuses on the relationship among social beliefs about gender, self-assessment of entrepreneur ability and entrepreneurship as a career choice. She uses resource-based approaches to investigate how social beliefs about different sexes affect the identification of abilities of one’s own and the opportunities of entrepreneurship. 
   This report can be divided into 4 parts. First is the introduction part in which the author illustrates the persistent gender gap in entrepreneurship and resources that iare necessary in business, and briefly states the main purposes of this research. The second part is about the analysis of relationship among gender, entrepreneurship and gender beliefs based on the previous studies on this topic, including their patterns, findings and women's structural disadvantages, such as network, financial resource and discrimination in business world. In the third part, the author talks about how gender differentiates self-assessment and career plan according to the status characteristics theory put forward by Berger and his fellows in 1977 and then states her four hypotheses. Finally, by demonstrating, analyzing and discussing her research data and statistics, the author proves her hypotheses. 
Thébaud does excel in illustrating and proving the relationship among culture beliefs about gender, the self-assessment of capabilities in self-employment and entrepreneurship. Through her analysis and discussion, her logic can be seen apparently: social or cultural beliefs about gender, or gender stereotypes influence the process and results of self-assessment when people, both males and females, consider business of entrepreneurship. Based on the evaluation, people will make decisions for their businesses’ development or their career choice—whether start a new business or enter paid labor market—and eventually their decisions will be mirrored on the performance of them or their corporate, the current odd of pursuing corporate ownership and the inequality in entrepreneurship. 
   When comes to data and method part, the author quotes about 15,242 samples after dropping 2,599 cases due to missing values, which shows her great consideration about the validity of samples. This number of samples is sufficient to neglect random error. Also the author clarifies the dependent variables, including “the knowledge, skill and experience required starting a business” (Thébaud 294) and independent variables—gender, “human capital-related factors, the availability of personal financial resources, and a basic measure of relevant network resources” (Thébaud 295)—in advance so that reader can notice categorized factors that influence the process of entrepreneurship. 
One should be pointed out with great regret that the author has addressed a shortcoming of the previous studies that “there is a relative lack of understanding of the earliest stage of nascent entrepreneurship” (Thébaud 290) without covering it. Here “earliest stage” means stage in which people assess their entrepreneur abilities, the possibility of starting a new business and resources that they have at that moment before their start-ups are founded. Moreover the words and expressions the author uses in the article are not sufficiently academic. For example, the author is accustomed to utilize “I” in the data and statistics part, which may show her subjectiveness. But still flaws cannot obscure the splendor of the jade. Thébaud performs well in other aspects.

   This research is highly recommended to people who intent to start their new business or who are beginning start-ups because this research report demonstrates not only the current situation of self-employment and significant factors that affect sexual  proportion of entrepreneurship, but also the effect that social culture brings to self-assessment when people consider entrepreneurship. With awareness of the relationship among social beliefs about gender, self-assessment and entrepreneurship, people can appraise themselves more objectively and make a better decision about their career goals and plans.

Reflection
   My writing began by reviewing my MA5 assignment. After finishing the MA5 assignment, I gradually understand the differences and similarities between customers’ reviews in Amazon.com and academic reviews in journals and newspaper in the aspects of tones, contents, structures, purpose and audience. Therefore, in this paper I follow the instructions of MA5 and the examples of previous articles that I read before for the assignment of MA5. I decided to write the academic review first because I thought this can help me to reorganize the information provided by the research again and through organizing the format of my review I could write the paper logically. Also, since the language used in the academic review is much formal than that in customers’ review, it is better for me to write academic review first.
   Before I began to write the academic review, I read the research report of Sarah Thébaud three times. Alone side with reading, I divided the whole article into 4 parts in accordance with its content and sub-titles, just like I demonstrated in the article. Then I summarized the general meaning of each part. During reading, I found something confusing. For example, I could not figure out what the “Model 2” means in the essay because the author does not illustrate the model concretely. I sorted out these problems considering whether it’s possible to add them into the review. Also I found some shining points in the essay, such as excellent explanation of certain concepts or confusing definitions. 
   After reading through the whole essay, in the next step, I studied the words and expressions that the author uses. I discovered that this essay is highly readable because the words and expressions the author utilizes are popular and easy to understand, especially when she explains some terms and concepts. But as a scientific and academic essay, the author uses words “I” frequently. For instance, in paragraph three of the left column in page 294, the author says “…, I suspect that: ….” As we all know hypothesis is guesses and ideas that have not yet been proved to be true. Therefore it is redundant to say “I suspect”. In addition, I thought “I” is subjective in social scientific research.
   After clarifying the advantages and disadvantages of this essay, I began to consider what the target audience is so that I can know the group of people to whom I recommend the essay. Apart from professors and students who specialize in this field, I thought people who intent to start a new business or who have already had a start-up would like to read this essay because they would like to know the current situation of labor market, the attitude of the mass towards male and female entrepreneurs and the resources that different gender can get in the process of entrepreneurship when considering relevant business. So I would like to recommend this essay to these people.
   After sorting out my ideas, I started to write with the instruction of MA5. I tried to use academic language to express my opinion. For example, at the beginning of the third paragraph, at first I wrote “Sarah does a good job in….” But soon I realized that “do a good job” is not formal in academic writing and it is not appropriate to address the given name of the author so I changed it, saying “Thébaud does excel in….” Moreover, I avoided using subjective words in the review such as “I think” and “as we all know”.
Finishing the academic review, I began to writing the review in Amazon.com’s style. Since I have done a lot preparation work before writing, I easily wrote this review in a casual tone. I used oral expressions in the review, such as “well”, “wanna” and “coz”, and some emoticons. Apart from that, I also applied some emotional words, such as “appreciate”.


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