‘It just seems that they don’t act like men’: The influence of gender role stereotypes on women’s entrepreneurial innovation activities

•Gender role stereotypes result in limited inclusiveness of innovation activities.•Women are deemed less capable innovators because of their gender.•Women use their agency to counter the discrediting of their innovation performance. The purpose of this study is to explore how gender role stereotypes influence women entrepreneurs in their innovation activities. To examine how women perceive and respond to stereotypes that deem them less capable of initiating innovation processes of creative destruction in Schumpeterian terms, I draw on symbolic interactionism. The ethnographic field study I conducted in an entrepreneurial ecosystem reveals that relevant actors and institutions still attribute women as exploring innovation potentials of limited scope, having higher risk awareness, and exploiting identified innovation potentials in niche rather than mainstream markets, while they are more often driven by emotions. To challenge these stereotypes and thrive in exploring and exploiting innovation potential, they need to invest considerable resources in legitimation efforts, building strategic alliances, and managing expectations. These findings contribute to the development of theory on the impact of gender on the performance of innovation activities.