Essay Outline.

My original topic was very sparse. I had developed a probable problem, that women are inherently less likely to gain capital than men are, but I had read nothing to support that, and had just based it on what seemed to me to be a logical hypothesis, and planned to read more about entrepreneurship once I started this project and form my hypothesis from my evolving findings. I didn't write my hypothesis until after I had read, obviously, so it is generally based on my early findings and has only become broader and better supported with time.

My focus changed to examine more specifically that women generally do not apply for capital at all, that they are discouraged from the highly technological fields and instead, operate in even smaller small businesses, which are inherently less profitable (say, restaurant ownership, cleaning businesses, or the assistance of any number of other services), and why there is insufficient leadership encouragement and support. When this becomes a thesis topic, and the scope can be expanded extensively because of the lengthened word count, I'm going to focus specifically on why women are still much less apt to go into highly skilled scientific positions, based on the ways in which they educate themselves, if this is a sex difference or a socialized gender construct, and how this disadvantages them financially when starting their own businesses. However, for now, I just want to focus on the aspects of how and why women are socialized into depending on friends and family for economic agency, when these resources are available elsewhere. Of course, usually, the help of friends and family is altruistic, good, and may not even require that women feel dependent. However, my focus is on expanding options for women, rather than socializing them into a specific function or role in society. This reading is especially supported by the report from LexisNexis, as well as my New Perspectives on Women Entrepreneurs text.

I'm also fascinated with the idea of systems of power, specifically that patriarchy works with the women seeking white collar positions (or if you want to read it through the lens of Marxist feminism, the Proletariat) as players. Since the beginning of women having access to white collar work, assimilation into a male-dominated scheme required the downplaying of traditionally "female" personality traits, which assumes that they can be gendered in the first place, and thereby put into a context of hierarchal negotiation of value. Put more simply, this assumes that the ways in which we read traditional masculinity is apropos to successful negotiation in the economic sphere. Also, to clarify, my choice of verbiage when I say "female" rather than "feminine" personality traits was made because even if men were to exhibit similar gendered traits, they would not be under a microscope in the same ways women often are in the workplace. Capitalism and patriarchy as systems advance themselves symmetrically to one another, inextricably linked in terms of how they perceive men, women, and value. My research does exhibit that people in power perceive women in terms of gendered stereotypes, but regardless of my research, the power differential would be obvious to anyone who took note of how few minorities are offered powerful positions (example: only fifteen Fortune 500 companies have female CEOs). The interplay between women subordinating their own priorities in favor of the path of least resistance and the way patriarchy works systemically will comprise a very large section of the way I'm theorizing these issues.

Everything emphasized in the paragraph above just refers to corporate America, but as evidenced by the Buttner and Rosen text, "Bank Loan Officers' Perceptions of Female, Male, and Successful Entrepreneurs," these disadvantages extend far past that sector. The two issues I've yet to look into even nearly enough are the glass ceiling, since I've yet to be able to outline in my head how I can make it relevant, and work/family conflicts and how they are alleviated and complicated by small business ownership, specifically for women. I don't hate my topic yet at all, but I do need to figure out how to theorize all of the disparate issues I'm examining.