Refugee Women Business Mentors: New Evidence for Women’s Empowerment

Abstract

With over 27.1 million refugees displaced globally across national borders as a result of protracted crises, conflict, and danger, resettlement in host nations remains challenging. One approach for empowering refugee women in their host nations is to enhance their economic participation through entrepreneurship. We contribute to the growing research on refugee women’s entrepreneurship by focusing on refugee women entrepreneurs as mentors to other refugee women and exploring the impact of mentoring upon the empowerment of refugee women business mentors. The aim of the study is to explore the impact of being a mentor on the empowerment of refugee women entrepreneurs settled in the United Kingdom. As such, the research question asks to what extent does being a mentor influence the empowerment of refugee women entrepreneurs. The qualitative study involved six refugee women business mentors who co-designed and led an entrepreneurship training programme for refugee women in the United Kingdom and charted their empowerment journeys through four potential empowerment junctures within the mentoring process. First, the refugee woman as a mentee, then as a member of a mentoring group, thirdly as a facilitator in the mentoring process, and finally as a reflective agent. Our contribution to the women’s entrepreneurship discipline lies in our finding that refugee women’s engagement as mentors enhanced their empowerment in ways that their entrepreneurship alone cannot.

Can Legislation Reduce Domestic Violence in Developing Countries?

“…Our findings are consistent with the literature on women's empowerment and gender equality [8,9]. In particular, positive treatments such as serving as a business mentor and receiving training in microfinance, improve women's sense of empowerment [12,13]. Our results are also in line with those from studies on the impacts of government policies that specifically target intimate relationships in women.…”

“…Empowering women through education could be effective at reducing gender inequality at birth by lessening the preference for sons over daughters [10,11]. Among the various factors that could influence women's empowerment, such as education, income, and assets, Street et al [12] show that being a business mentor to other women raises their sense of empowerment. Furthermore, training in microfinance is positively linked to various empowerment indicators such as intra-household decision making, as well as political and community participation [13].…”

Barriers to entrepreneurship: an intersectional analysis of an early-stage refugee entrepreneurship programme in the United Kingdom

“…So for some of our sewing classes, we've got a creche in place. Now one of our concerns is how the children are gonna deal with being away from their parents for those two (Street et al, 2022). Consistent with findings from feminist studies in migrant entrepreneurship (Lassalle & Shaw, 2021), migrationcreated traumas had combined to create disincentives for would-be women entrepreneurs, while also isolating children.…”

Woman Entrepreneurial Orientation Based on Synthetic Scooping Review

“…Empowerment is an iterative process with key components including an enabling environment that encourages people's participation in decision-making that affects the achievement of goals such as poverty alleviation, social integration and decent work for all as well as sustainable development (e.g. Street, 2022).…”