Cultural and Gender Experiences, Entrepreneurial Identity and Business Endeavours of Chinese Immigrant Entrepreneurs

Abstract

Existing studies on the relationship between culture, gender and entrepreneurial identity of immigrant entrepreneurs have tended to focus exclusively on women. I set out to understand how Chinese immigrant men and women entrepreneurs construct their entrepreneurial identities based on cultural and gendered experiences. I asked: How do Chinese immigrant men and women entrepreneurs construct entrepreneurial identities based on their cultural and gender experiences? How are these experiences related to entrepreneurial endeavours and views of entrepreneurial success? Through a qualitative study of 20 in-depth interviews with 10 men and 10 women, I explored similarities and differences within and between the two groups. The findings show that both men and women narrated entrepreneurial identities as coming from nothing, reflecting the notion of “zero mindset” proposed in the literature. My study contributes by connecting coming-from-nothing to entrepreneurial endeavours and perceptions of success. I also show that there is a spectrum of cultural identities ranging from identifying strongly as Chinese to identifying as Chinese Canadian, and that positioning on this spectrum can influence business endeavours. The study also contributes by presenting a direct comparison between men and women immigrant entrepreneurs from the same home and host countries. It does so by showing that: women associated with the idea of “learning entrepreneurship”, whereas men associated with the concept of innately “being entrepreneur”; women tended to prioritize the gender role of mother and wife over the entrepreneurial role and to define success as stability in the business and balance between work and family, more so than men did.