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P-050Academic Entrepreneurship as Local Discursive Formations - A GenderAnalysisBritt-Inger Keisu, Malin Rönnblom, Umeå University, SwedenTraditionally, (academic) entrepreneurship has been equated with masculinity and men. Today, several universities have theambition of broadening the scope of academic entrepreneurship in order to "include women" as potential academic entrepreneurs,i.e. academic entrepreneurship is at least partly included in the ambitions of working with gender equality issues in SwedishUniversities.The main purpose of this paper is to scrutinize how the local discursive formations of gender and gender equality are producedin four different research settings at Umeå university in Sweden. The analysis departs from a critical policy analysis approach;the "What's the problem represented to be? Approach" (the WPR Approach) developed by Carol Bacchi (1999, 2009) as a wayof investigating how academic entrepreneurship is constituted and thus given meaning in these four contexts. Thus, academicentrepreneurship is regarded as produced in local settings, settings that also need to be contextualised in relation to moreoverarching discourses of academic entrepreneurship. Central questions coming from this approach are: How is academicentrepreneurship understood? What are the assumptions or presuppositions underlying these representations? And what areleft unproblematized in this way of representing academic entrepreneurship? The paper particularly highlights how of academicentrepreneurship is constructed in relation to aspects like commercialization and innovation systems, thus these aspects arealso scrutinised through the WPR approach. One issue of importance is if the researcher at all deals with these questions. Inthe process of commercialization one has to point out the commercial potential of a scientific development and next step in theprocess is venturing this in de academic bureaucracy (Rosa & Dawson 2006). To do this the innovations system support isneeded. One other interesting issue is therefore if these innovation systems are known and if they serve as good support indifferent types of research settings.The empirical material consists of focus group interviews in four different research settings at Umeå University. The ambition isto interview researcher in settings who already have established cooperation and networks with external entrepreneurs andthose who haven't. Even though already established research settings have developed systems for these processes theremethods can vary. These differences are also an interesting part of the study. The material further deals with policy documentsand project document from DARE (Development Arena for Research and Entrepreneurship). DARE is a key project with purposeto strengthen commercialization at Umeå University and Luleå University of Technology in Sweden.References;Bacchi, C. (1999) Women, the construction of Policy Problems, Policy and Politics. London: Sage.Bacchi, C. (2009) Analysing Policy: What's the problem represented to be? Australia: Pearson.Rosa, P. & Dawson, A. (2006) Gender and the commercialization of university science: academic founders of spinout companies.Entrepreneurship& Regional Development, 18 (4), 341-366.Madrid, October 20, 21 & 22 - 2010176