Breaking the Barriers : Gender, Culture and Diversity in Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Europe is facing a challenge when it comes to innovation and entrepreneurship. The most recent report from The Global Entrepreneurship monitor, published in November 2023, points to an overall trend in the landscape of entrepreneurship: At the global level, the numbers and activities of women entrepreneurs are on the rise.  Women make up the majority of innovation entrepreneurs in some African, Asian, and south American countries, but only in one European country – Romania.  At the same time, it is well-known that Europe’s wealth depends on research and innovation as a driver of economic progress, prosperity, and the potential to face many of the major societal challenges. Therefore it is a problem that R and I lacks diversity, ignoring insights, that  diversity and the inclusion of various genders, and other categories,  enriches organizations’ structures, processes and creative problem-solving. When innovation teams include individuals of different genders, they are more likely to consider a broader range of ideas and solutions, leading to more creative and effective outcomes of products and services.  This book takes a fresh look at such facts and figures and shed lights on new and hidden components. Entrepreneurship and innovation is framed in discourses and practices of gender, culture and intersectional approaches.

Hilda Rømer Christensen is associated professor at the Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen. She has been head of the Coordination for Gender Studies at University of Copenhagen 1996-2024. Besides she has been involved in gender expert research committees at Nordic and European levels, latest in the EU Commission to the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Advisory board.
She has written extensively on gender, culture, religion, welfare, and citizenship more lately on gender and innovation in transport and sustainability in comparative European and Sino Nordic perspective. Hilda has supervised PhD. +  MA dissertations and papers + organized seminars, summer-schools, and workshops focused on intersectionality and diversity in various contexts and theoretical and empirical levels. 

Nicola Marsden is a research professor of social informatics at Heilbronn University, Germany, She has served as an expert for numerous committees, including the European Research Area and Innovation Committee for Gender in Research and Innovation, the Third Equal Equality Report of the German Government, or the German UNESCO Commission for AI and Gender. Trained as a psychologist, she held leadership and consulting roles in international organizations, where she led change management and personnel development processes prior to her professorial appointment.

Her work bridges psychology, software engineering, design research, and organizational behavior to foster collaboration and innovation in tech development―often with a gender lens. She conducts research in real-world infrastructures such as living labs, using participatory and theory-informed methods to address structural bias and enable inclusive, human-centered design. Her current research focuses on behavioral design to de-bias design processes and socially responsible development of artificial intelligence.

Alena Křížková is head of the Gender and Sociology Department at the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences. She uses qualitative and quantitative methods and develops an intersectional approach to the study of social inequalities. Her research focuses on economic and social justice, the gender pay gap, work-life balance, the production of inequality in organizations, entrepreneurship and innovation, and technological change. She was a Fulbright Scholar at Arizona State University for comparative CZ-US research on entrepreneurship environment for disadvantaged populations and gender equality. She is an expert in the "Scientific analysis and advice on gender equality in the EU" (SAAGE) for the European Commission, a board member of the Global Women's Entrepreneurship Policy network (https://www.globalwep.org/about) and a member of the Comparative Organizational Inequality Network (https://www.umass.edu/coin/).

Andree Woodcock is Professor for Education, Ergonomics & Design at the Coventry University and the Scientific lead of t Horizon Europe GILL Project.