Across the Global South – those parts of the globe made up of poor regions outside Europe and North America, most with low-income and with less-developed economies – many women find themselves treated as second-class citizens and secondrate entrepreneurs. They enjoy fewer opportunities with regards to education, to employment, to controlling their own destiny, and there is a widespread desire for those circumstances to change. Entrepreneurship is more and more seen as a possible emancipatory instrument for women’s liberation and empowerment from endemic poverty, overt discrimination, and patriarchal restrictions; indeed, it is held up almost as a universal ‘solution’ for numerous problems in the Global South. The benefits of entrepreneurship are many-fold: it creates wealth and jobs, offers welfare, can build confidence and status. Governments, policymakers, and international donor organisations see it as a strategic tool for economic growth and social advancement – a mechanism for emancipation and independence. The World Economic Forum suggested in 2018 that empowering women to engage in the global economy would add US$28tn in GDP growth by 2025. This empowerment is a multidimensional process where women emerge as self-reliant and confident in their independence to make choices and control their own resources. It includes access to economic power and income generation, education, rights, and political participation. It is this empowerment that challenges female subordination in a society. Much emphasis on women’s entrepreneurship in the Global South centres around the economic issues, thus failing to address key societal aspects. It supposes all men and women, rich and poor, can achieve their potential if they try hard enough. Questions of empowerment must take into account the full social context in which entrepreneurship takes place. Both formal and informal institutions – cultural, social, and political – shape the ways in which women’s entrepreneurship is treated both across the geography and in specific areas. Women entrepreneurs encounter many impediments that shape and stunt their practice, as the interplay of tradition, culture, and patriarchy conspire to subordinate their efforts. Their entrepreneurial agency – the ability to make things happen – is constricted. Women desire to be liberated from the status quo, from poverty and subordination, through the empowerment of entrepreneurship – it is seen as a gateway out of imprisonment to allow them to achieve more as individuals. Some strive to involve other women, and thus alter the societal status quo and rectify women’s subjugation. In many countries and societies, this is because women have much lower prospects of controlling their lives and careers, or of making economic 20 |
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTI5NzM=