This paper demonstrates that engagement in innovation and enterprise activity in SET departments within three UK universities is, in part, gendered. A Bourdieuian approach is adopted to identify underlying structures and practices that have causal powers to generate gender‐based inequalities. Drawing on empirical research with 52 participants, this study reveals gendered science enterprise experiences, characterized by a field that is considered strong in shaping the habitus and presenting stark options to women in pursuit of their careers. It demonstrates the multilayered nature of the fields that shape gendered experiences and resultant inequalities by taking into account individual dispositions of academics and their habitus, including their science enterprise experience and the wider commercial field beyond the university, and generates a number of implications for practice and policy.