Deconstructing the Myth: African Women Entrepreneurs’ Access to Resources

Woldesenbet, Kassa; Mwila, Natasha Katuta; Ogunmokun, Olapeju Comfort

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-75894-3_21

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

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“…The first 3 Ms, markets, money and management, are considered as fundamental "building blocks" for viable business (Bates et al, 2007;Brush et al (2009)). An increasing number of empirical studies found that women are in a disadvantaged position in relation to the accretion of entrepreneurial resources (Jayawarna et al, 2015), education (Carter et al, 1997), managerial skills (Zolin et al, 2013), social and professional networks (Jayawarna et al, 2015), finance (Freel et al, 2012) and market, money and management (Woldesenbet Beta et al, 2022). For example, growing evidence exists that shows the gender gap in access to finance (Klapper and Parker, 2011), women are less likely to be financed from formal financial institutions (Aterido et al, 2013) and that they rely more on internal or informal credit.…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A review of and future research agenda on women entrepreneurship in Africa

Woldesenbet Beta,

Mwila,

Ogunmokun

2024

IJEBR

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PurposeThis paper seeks to systematically review and synthesise existing research knowledge on African women entrepreneurship to identify gaps for future studies.Design/methodology/approachThe paper conducted a systematic literature review of published studies from 1990 to 2020 on women entrepreneurship in Africa using a 5M gender aware framework of Brush et al. (2009).FindingsThe systematic literature review of published studies found the fragmentation, descriptive and prescriptive orientation of studies on Africa women entrepreneurship and devoid of theoretical focus. Further, women entrepreneurship studies tended to be underpinned from various disciplines, less from the entrepreneurship lens, mostly quantitative, and at its infancy stage of development. With a primary focus on development, enterprise performance and livelihood, studies rarely attended to issues of motherhood and the nuanced understanding of women entrepreneurship’s embeddedness in family and institutional contexts of Africa.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper questions the view that women entrepreneurship is a “panacea” and unravels how family context, customary practices, poverty and, rural-urban and formal/informal divide, significantly shape and interact with African women entrepreneurs’ enterprising experience and firm performance.Practical implicationsThe findings and analyses indicate that any initiatives to support women empowerment via entrepreneurship should consider the socially constructed nature of women entrepreneurship and the subtle interplay of the African institutional contexts’ intricacies, spatial and locational differences which significantly influence women entrepreneurs’ choices, motivations and goals for enterprising.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to a holistic understanding of women entrepreneurship in Africa by using a 5M framework to review the research knowledge. In addition, the paper not only identifies unexplored/or less examined issues but also questions the taken-for-granted assumptions of existing knowledge and suggest adoption of context- and gender-sensitive theories and methods.

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