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From Here Forward shares stories and ideas about amazing things UBC and its alumni are doing around the world. It covers people and places, truths, science, art, and accomplishments with the view that sharing better inspires better. Join hosts Carol Eugene Park and Jeevan Sangha, both UBC grads, in exploring solutions for the negative stuff out there — focussing on the good for a change, from here forward.
Is innovation too masculine? Uncovering the hidden gender gap – Final transcript
[00:00:00] Carol Eugene Park: Hello, friendly alumni you are listening to From Here Forward, an award-winning UBC Podcast Network podcast. I'm Carol.
[00:00:08] Jeevan Sangha: And I'm Jeevan.
[00:00:08] Carol Eugene Park: Today we're talking about gender and innovation, but before we get there, do you have any favorite female founded or female owned Canadian businesses Jeevan?
[00:00:17] Jeevan Sangha: Ooh, okay. This is a fun question. Uh, a local pick, I'm actually a big fan of Bloom skincare, Punjabi owned business, founded by two sisters from the metro Vancouver area, which is very lovely. What about you?
[00:00:29] Carol Eugene Park: I've got two; as a dog mom, Stranger Tails. They have some really good hands-free long lesions also from Metro Van. Very cool. And Dexy Paws. They are Ontario based, but iconic female owned. Love them.
[00:00:44] Jeevan Sangha: Okay, I'm adding these both to my list. Those will sound great. It's 2026. And some people might assume that the gender balance in the entrepreneurial space is relatively close or on par. If you scroll through social media or look at those business lists of the leading pioneers, it looks like an equal number of women and men,
[00:01:01] Carol Eugene Park: and I was definitely one of those people.
You know, when I see those 30 under 30 lists that feature young entrepreneurs, I'm for sure thinking it's 50-50. Even my algorithm features many women entrepreneurs with cool businesses that I wanna support.
[00:01:16] Jeevan Sangha: But Carol and I learned that the stats actually tell a slightly different story. We talked to Dr. Angèle Beausoleil, an assistant professor at the UBC Sauder School of Business. She's also the academic director of the UBC's Maurice Young Center for Entrepreneur and Venture Capital Research. She recently wrote a chapter about gender and innovation in the Encyclopedia of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Spirituality. If you'd like to read it, we'll link it in the show note.
[00:01:40] Carol Eugene Park: It was an insightful conversation about how despite diverse identities participating in historically male dominant industries. These spaces are still gendered, often having masculinity embedded into them, so we hope you enjoy.
Can you please introduce yourself? Who are you and what do you do?
[00:01:56] Angèle Beausoleil: I am Dr. Angèle Beausoleil, and I am an assistant professor, part of the educational leadership team focused on entrepreneurship and innovation at UBC Solder School of Business.
[00:02:07] Jeevan Sangha: And today we're gonna talk a bit about your work around gender and innovation. But to start, it would be great to hear a bit about what drove that research interest for you.
[00:02:17] Angèle Beausoleil: So I'm what we say in industry and academia. I'm called a pracademic, and uh, the reason for this crazy term is that I actually spent over 20 years in industry before deciding later in life to go and get a PhD. And so part of the motivation of this research and also simply wanting to dig a bit deeper in terms of.
Innovation experiences, experiments, leadership, and outcomes was omnipresent. It was a place in which I worked when I was in industry as a consultant, as a new product designer and developer, and as a serial entrepreneur. And the system's very broken. It's broken in many levels. The one problem and issue that I was so motivated to research more deeply was really understanding our lack of literacy around how innovation.
Really happens. And who actually participates in this innovation process inside organizations, and can those be improved? And essentially, I saw a lot of what I would call innovation theater, a lot of companies saying we need to be innovative, but not necessarily thinking, do we have the right systems, systems in place?
Do we have the right people in place? And can we genuinely innovate and or improve? Product service, a process so that the public or the consumer benefits, it's very broken, very uneven. And so there was this persistent cycle of bad leadership making decisions that were shareholder driven as opposed to stakeholder or consumer driven, and the need to innovate based on performative approaches as opposed to genuine improvements and change.
And so I set forth to go. There must be a better recipe or formula to innovate, and that led me to pursue a PhD and to really understand what we call an entrepreneurship plan, where the human in the loop really should be and how. Best, can we have broader representation in that loop?
[00:04:24] Carol Eugene Park: That sounds really cool.
I love hearing when professionals have a whole career and then they go to pursue a PhD. I feel like it really adds nuance to that research in ways that the flip side doesn't always. Produce. So your most recent chapter about gender innovation, the title itself, very interesting. As someone who doesn't really know much about business, I was like, is innovation too masculine?
[00:04:49] Angèle Beausoleil: What does that mean? Well, I do love to ask a lot of questions. It's probably why I landed and became this academic and an educational leader asking the question is first and foremost. So important. We need to ask those questions that may not be popular, may even institute a bit of friction. It is meant to be provocative.
So the idea is, is it masculine? First and foremost? You question what like is there actually is, is innovation gender to begin with? And why are we calling it masculine over anything else? And so that was meant to be provocative, but also to surface. Years of research in terms of a gender gap in innovation, processes, experiments inside organizations, and also question our entrepreneurial ecosystems, our innovation ecosystems.
So by asking is it too masculine, it immediately makes us question, hmm, if I look around, can we visibly see it? Can we sense it? Can we see it in roles? Do we see it in terms of. Ethics and morality, and so it immediately just sparks us to be a little more attuned, to become more observant. Is it male dominated?
Is it masculine in terms of traits? And so that was really a provocative question to then begin a conversation on. And then to go, if it's too masculine, that means we have an orientation. Perhaps towards masculine coated traits, masculine terminology, what does that actually signal and is it inviting or is it actually exclusive?
So that really surfaced a lot of questions in and around. What does masculinity mean in the role of innovation? And then do we have evidence to suggest there could be an orientation towards, and there is, and a significant orientation would be, for example, the most recent stats. Is that 90% of inventors, even in Canada are male.
That's a stat. That's a data point.
[00:06:51] Carol Eugene Park: Like nine zero.
[00:06:53] Angèle Beausoleil: Yes. Just between 88 and nine zero.
[00:06:55] Carol Eugene Park: Wow.
[00:06:56] Angèle Beausoleil: That's, and even when, yeah, it's significant when we just look at that male oriented versus female, even with. Founders and female leaders, we are still looking between 17 and 19% of those are leaders in Canadian small, medium sized companies and organizations.
That's a smaller,
[00:07:16] Carol Eugene Park: that's really surprising. 'cause I feel like when I'm doing a quick scan of headlines or social media things of women owned business, women founders, it seems like there's so much more than I've ever seen. But clearly statistically, we still haven't made that much progress than what we think we have.
Would you say that's
[00:07:34] Angèle Beausoleil: correct? Yes, and absolutely. And highlight a shocking stat would be women entrepreneurs receive less than 5% of venture founding funds over their male counterparts. That's staggering. So we have some work to do.
[00:07:49] Carol Eugene Park: That's a crazy stat. If we could just rewind quickly, could you talk more about the historic intersections between gender and innovation, just since we've covered so much already?
[00:07:59] Angèle Beausoleil: Yes, and I'd say I'm really just. Scratching the surface on this research. And I've arrived again as a practitioner, as a female entrepreneur, and as a woman innovator. So I do have a different set of lived experiences and perspectives. And I'd say of those theoretical frameworks, uh, the practices we see and industry.
There are always these constructs that we constantly question, which is biology or socially constructed. We can't help but we go, how much of this is essentially what are we born with? What are we born into, and what are these cultural and social norms we fall into and or follow? And so it's complicated, obviously.
So it seems that a lot of the research, again, I'm leaning heavily on those who've studied it deeply, is there's always this intersection. I think too many times we want to polarize, is it this or that, but actually it's really where the intersect, where the rich information, the data, and the norms really surface.
And this is where biologically women do have a set of hormones that are biologically different than their male counterparts. Then there's of course, the more impactful aspect, which is what we sometimes call the evolutionary psychology, the behavior. So how do we behave? With our biology in a circumstance over time, and we have, based on that probably initial biology, we have been in a position to be more of that caregiver.
That's because we've signaled perhaps in our physiology, we behave a certain way and then society. And through evolutionary psychology and our behavior, we behave in a sense of we are relationship oriented. We are someone who seeks community as a gender. So there are these traits and norms that have been, I'd say, coupled with the fact that we have very basic sort of biology.
But it's, I'd say those two in the greater context of really society is where we truly. The norms, the roles and why we are having this conversation today in terms of this massive gender gap in innovation is that we have been perpetuating this norm that for the most part, women are caregivers and male need to be providers.
And that norm, of course, it's been hopefully shattered. At least we've got some fissures along the way in terms of, no, they are not a, it's not a gender Dubai, but it is what society has deemed and has identified. So for the years, even when the first notion of an entrepreneur, this came from British economists, would actually describe a male construct, right?
So what we call the heroic innovator is often described as a male, uh, very risk oriented, who has the confidence. Sometimes we'd say overconfidence, but we have the confidence and would be able to secure resources. And those resources would then lead to the ability to then, of course, create an enterprise and build an enterprise and then hire others that they could then generate personal wealth, bring it home, and then create community.
So these are deep, deeply, deeply societal norms that suggest that leader, someone who is to build, launch an enterprise, happens to be more of a. Male archetype as opposed to a female or matriarch. And so over time we see that being repeated. And we also, we associate traits such as this ability to be very confident, perceived as bold.
We have terms like grit. We have these terms that seem very competitive, that are surfaced and what we call masculine coated scenes in research as opposed to the. May be perceived as soft, although not just different, you know, the competitive as opposed to cooperative, the ability to actually engage in different points of view as opposed to being driven to an outcome.
And so societally, we have accepted and are likely also supporting that, whether we are aware of it or not. Whether we are women in the entrepreneurial process or innovation system, we support it, whether we're aware of it or not, that those norms are kind of expected. And so when we see or even type in, and I love doing this in terms of gen ai, you know, we're in the biases and so there's gender biases everywhere in terms of we expect to see a male and we expect to see, particularly, especially at UBC with our scientific community.
There is a notion of a particular archetype, male, likely in a lab coat, so on and so forth. And that's been part of our mythology, which is interesting. It is a mythology, so we can question it, we can build and we can maybe start changing a bit of that mythology, but we do need to know that it exists. And I think that's where the question really comes in.
Let's just ask does it exist? How does it exist? Why does it exist? Can we possibly change it?
[00:12:56] Jeevan Sangha: I'm curious about what happens when we don't acknowledge this risk folks maybe aren't even comfortable with the idea that that's a bias that exists. What are the risks? Not only culturally, but for organizations and companies who are maybe ignorant to the idea of a gender bias in corporate spaces, and particularly within innovation,
[00:13:20] Angèle Beausoleil: there are several risks.
Maybe I'll start with what are the pros, and I'd say we could see if we do not identify that gender difference or maybe missing a few different perspectives at the table, we tend to observe a sense of consensus and alignment. There's a sense of a unilateral view, and that's frictionless. Well, we love frictionless, so a positive orientation to say, let's all align.
Or gain consensus, move forward with a decision so we can begin the implementation process leading to outcome. On the surface, it does not sound lovely, but in reality to your specific question around risks, is that that scenario. Is often called groupthink. Groupthink surfaces a lot of risks. So a problem is presented.
You're saying, this is the problem, let's go actually solve it, as opposed to different perspectives in the room, be it different genders and different cultural and lived experiences. Question. Is this the right problem? Are we actually approaching the problem the right way? Who's really the problem owner?
Do we understand their needs? Do we need to do more research? Those questions are not asked, and the risks of not asking those questions and not having different points of view. Is you make quick decisions with a very limited data set and very limited and restrictive points of view. So it means on average, again, very well studied, that very poor decisions are made when you are not inviting those that are perceived to be dissenters.
Historically, we have seen horrible decisions, let alone modern ones right now where you do not have anyone in the room or giving you advice in terms of perhaps there are better ways of approaching, for example, a situation that might involve residential schools. Years ago, or decisions in terms of the US of Bay of Pigs or the war on Iran today, or lacking judgment and virality, raising those questions around geni algorithmic biases.
So the risks far outweigh the benefits when it comes to having. And group think are those that are so aligned that there's no one there to provide a question, provoke conversation and seek better outcomes.
[00:15:41] Carol Eugene Park: What are some examples of market disrupting innovations that have been developed or marketed as a result of women contributions, women entrepreneurs, and their ideas?
[00:15:52] Angèle Beausoleil: So we see women across multiple domains. I know often we think that this is, 'cause innovation happens to be so closely intertwined with technologies over the centuries, especially from industrial era of, you know, building machines or technologies. And so we do tend to associate innovation with, I'd say engineering orient.
So at UBC, we have incredible scientists and inventors who have led new therapeutic solutions. And I know that there's a young two co-founders who launched Chinook as a set of therapies and processes to detect essentially kidney concerns. So they've gone on and they've been acquired, and they're starting a new startup.
So there are many, many examples even at UBC in terms of co-founders. There's young co-founders that are just freshly minted PhD students who have been part of the innovation and pitch competition at UBC, and they're launching and using. Gen AI and machine learning to really understand how to detect early issues with seeds that are going to the vertical farms, to essentially a set of farming communities in, in bridge Columbia and also commercial farms.
And they're able to detect, uh, at the very granular level whether or not that seed will ultimately turn into a healthy plant, et cetera. And those are two co-founding. Of course, we have examples in the full food kit. I believe a Canadian launched Cook It, I forget her name. We launched one of the first meal kits and we only hear perhaps about other founders with a masculine name and that they're launching, whether it's the food industry in Agritech, in medical and lab tech, and even FinTech.
We have our dragons. Stem. The women that sit on that, it's actually two or three of them. They've all done some really great innovations in different domains. Food and beverage, marketing and finance, and of course, online digital. So I think we do see a lot of women leadership and women innovators across multiple domains.
There's still going to be 80/20 at the very least, that presents itself in terms of what are the real numbers in terms of those making impact. And typically we see those leaders, the innovators, the entrepreneurs. That are scaling and growing at a rate a lot more media attention than, for example, a percentage of new immigrant female founders launching bakeries out of their kitchen, launching sewing entire online communities from their home office.
The scale is very different, and I'd say if anything, it's because they're so distributed across communities, across categories, you don't have the same impact and influence, if you will. So of course we have incredible community of female innovators. They're not necessarily seeking the spotlight. They're not necessarily being invited to share their story.
They're not necessarily driven or motivated to grow and scale their company to benefit private equity firms.
[00:19:08] Jeevan Sangha: And so looking forward, what are some of the ways that organizations, companies can start these conversations and begin to ensure. That a diverse range of voices and perspectives are heard in relation to new innovations?
I know that's a huge question, and I'm sure it's the big issue of your research, but what's the starting point? Like where do we begin?
[00:19:31] Angèle Beausoleil: So the starting point, and I firmly believe this, is that we work within and leverage our superpowers as we have them. And so I think don't shy away, don't develop more masculine traits to get ahead.
And I know gone through the eighties, the nineties, it's very much was where I was going in terms of my entrepreneurial ventures. And I think, okay, now it's just really surfaced the talents and maybe those societal norms that have been handed to us. So if we are. Biologically and of course more socially caregiving, and we are about relationship building.
That's one of our superpowers. Oh my goodness. We should be leading in terms of developing relationships. So we should be at the forefront of business development activities. We are about relationships. If we are positioned and if society has suggested, we've developed an ability and a competency for relationship building.
We should be part, if not leading commercialization processes at universities. We should be, if we are market oriented, if we care about market needs and we are caregivers, we need to be part of the fuzzy front end of the innovation, that's our superpower. That's where we should play. Build upon that. So that market orientation, the relationship orientation.
And then our ability or our competence for community building means we can hopefully make more of an impact in terms of being more inclusive. So many companies want to access to identify and have fresh approaches to find those underserved markets. That serve the bottom line and the community as a mutually inclusive benefit as opposed to exclusive profit over planet or people.
So I think those are ways, first and foremost, we have a level of competency society has suggested and have raised us over the past 50 years to be. In those roles. In addition to, of course, our incredible ability to be both mathematicians and communicators, that's incredible. Hybrid gifts. To have society suggest we should be translating or communicating complex information that puts us in a very unique condition to be those translators.
How can we bring it to market? Of course, I'm being very general, not saying that every female innovator is going to have those skills, but generally, or societally, we have a lot of skills that have been valued at a slightly different. Percentage than those that are actually producing hard goods or products.
And yet the end of the day, no organization, government, private sector has an organization if they are not serving a public, a person, a people. Market. And so if anything, we need to probably be more confident, we should be borrowing in terms of the confidence that's considered male and it should be really a genderless construct.
Confidence is one aspect to say completely genderless and innovative. So I have been running a few experiments with a psychometric instrument, looking at demographics and looking at self-reported innovativeness levels. In innovativeness is essentially your current state. Generally, when you face a new idea, are you the first to adopt a new idea?
Are you one even to generate a new idea? And are you essentially potentially the last? And that essentially bell curve for the most part is called the technology adoption curve. So I have been running this experiment since my PhD, so over 10 years. And of course I went down to see what are the gender skews, how do we see, do we see a societal norm surfacing?
Do we see women who identify as women in the service? So I have over 6,000 people in my database. Those 6,000 are very, very heterogeneous, very broadly represented in terms of senior executives, founders of startups, managers, master's students, and undergraduate students from a variety of different sectors.
And so let me ask you, what do you think the results have suggested? Across this entire database and then perhaps in certain sub-sectors. What's your guess,
[00:23:50] Carol Eugene Park: Carol? It's all you. I can see the wheels turning. I was thinking about myself. I was like, where would I fall in those three categories? And I was like, I don't even know if I generate innovation.
So I feel like that's probably where that landed in your experiment, where a lot of women were like, I don't think I generate much 'cause of that self-deprecation that a lot of women experience, but maybe that's just me projecting. I don't know.
[00:24:12] Jeevan Sangha: I'd probably say something similar. I think a lot of women selling themselves short, which I think I've done before.
[00:24:18] Angèle Beausoleil: Well, the good news is they were on par and in certain sectors exceeded. So early adopter were actually a female on par with male, very close and in certain sectors completely exceeded. And those that exceeded the skew would be, I'd say over 45 years of age and also in senior leadership position.
Otherwise, we see parody, which to me is a resounding interesting insight. We self-report that we truly believe we see ourselves and not what the societal norms have suggested. We might want to report. So that is fascinating, which is exactly where my next set of research is going to take me.
[00:25:03] Carol Eugene Park: Were you as the researcher expecting that?
Like what were your initial thoughts going in?
[00:25:08] Angèle Beausoleil: I did not have a hypothesis because I have my own industry experience. And perhaps perceived bias as a researcher is that those individuals I have worked with always a mix of genders throughout, but I always saw some of the most creative thinkers and problem solvers actually being the women in the room, even though there was always a small percentage.
So I arrived and going. I'm curious what I was gonna say, because my own, when I take this test, and these are. Not psychometric instruments that I've developed. These are three reliable, long-term, over 70 years of reliability and validity, and when I've taken it over and over again and tested it, my result, even if I try to game, it still results very similarly.
And I was always very much the earliest adopter. I'm an inventor, I'm a maker, and it could be that in my community and those that I surround myself with. I saw that there were many and so I thought it, we might perhaps. Be a little lower, but I was hoping for parity, but I was surprised when it exceeded and some of my colleagues and co-researchers circled that and said That is novel insight.
No study yet has really been able to demonstrate that there is a statistically significant number. That suggests we self-report differently than what currently the societal norms are suggesting. And that type of tension or potential dichotomy is rich to read for more research.
[00:26:39] Carol Eugene Park: I wish I answered differently now.
[00:26:41] Angèle Beausoleil: No, it was an honest and genuine answer and by the way, most answer that way. You are at the end, the majority.
[00:26:48] Carol Eugene Park: So we are going to wrap up, but I wanted to give you some space. Were there any things that you wanted to mention that we didn't touch upon? Things that you're excited about as your research continues?
[00:26:58] Angèle Beausoleil: Well, I think Steven, you asked, you know, what could we do different? The big question. And I certainly will mention that, first of all, we need to acknowledge it. We need to acknowledge that there is a disparity, and that to ideally reach parity would be incredible. But even to put policies, practices in place.
Is a very positive step. Too many, let's say master orientation terms of innovation is not going to result in innovation. It's going to be subpar. So we do need to have more diverse limb experience, points of view at the table in a room. I think this is our time to, especially as we are elbows up, you know, Canadian proud is how can we and the government, the federal government and provincial government throughout Canada.
Are suggesting that of course they see and the science suggests and the data supports that more women in the innovation ecosystem at large will benefit our nation, will benefit societies, will benefit underserved communities. What can we all do about that? We can talk about it, which is fabulous. This is a great step.
We can encourage more young women, especially undergrads, as they come in to explore what entrepreneurship means and not present them a male oriented point of view. And even someone like me who teaches and studies entrepreneurship education, I am trying to make a gender neutral. Even the terminologies is very masculine, and so I'm very, very aware.
And then I'm training others to be very aware of gender neutral terms and approaches to entrepreneurship and innovation. So I think we need to be part of a growing ecosystem. Let's give ourselves all permission to, uh, be a little perhaps louder, ask lots of questions, continue our curiosity as to who's missing in this room.
Or in this process or project and support each other a along way.
[00:29:00] Jeevan Sangha: That is a really lovely note to end off on. I just wanted to say thank you so much for your time. It was been lovely chatting with you.
[00:29:06] Angèle Beausoleil: It's been great. Thank you so much for inviting me on.
[00:29:09] Carol Eugene Park: So what did you think Jeevan, is innovation gendered?
[00:29:13] Jeevan Sangha: You know, I think so. I mean, I'd go so far as to say most things have been gendered and I think the idea that problem solving or coming up with creative solutions. Is it inherently male trait is. It's a little ridiculous to me, but it's crazy how much that's entrenched in our society. What are you thinking about?
[00:29:32] Carol Eugene Park: What's that phrase, when someone says something really well that you were gonna say Better, better words.
[00:29:38] Jeevan Sangha: Couldn't have put it better myself.
[00:29:39] Carol Eugene Park: Couldn't have put it better myself. Um. Because women are the OG entrepreneurs, mothers, wives, sisters, all project managers, icons. That's all I have to say. We're resourceful people. Very resourceful people. Full stop. Anyway, thanks everyone for listening. Make sure you catch our our next episode by subscribing or following our show on Spotify, apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're feeling your feels, please drop us a review. You can find me on Blue Sky at Carol Eugene Park,
[00:30:09] Jeevan Sangha: and me on Twitter at Jeevan K Sangha.
From here forward is an alumni UBC podcast produced by Kylé McPhedran for Podium Podcast Company.