whether women can access them meaningfully and whether those networks respond to women’s everyday realities. Virtual networks, by contrast, played an important positive role. These include digital platforms, social media communities and online channels through which entrepreneurs connect with customers, peers and markets. For women whose physical mobility may be constrained by safety, family expectations or social norms, digital networks can provide alternative routes to visibility and market access. They can support marketing, peer learning, problem-solving and customer communication, often at lower cost than formal business development routes. SURVIVAL MODE The most striking finding from our data was that personal and virtual networks are both linked to business survival, while professional networks are not. Personal networks have the strongest positive association with survival, and their importance becomes even greater in adverse contexts similar to those found in Bangladesh. Virtual networks also become more valuable under difficult conditions. Professional networks, however, remain limited in their influence when adversity increased. This finding challenges a common assumption in entrepreneurship support: that formal networking is automatically the best form of networking. In many policy and business support conversations, informal networks are treated as secondary or less professional. Our research suggests the opposite can be true. For women entrepreneurs facing exclusion from formal systems, informal and digital ties can be highly strategic. They are not simply fallback options. They are adaptive infrastructures that help women keep businesses alive when official support is limited, distant or difficult to use. STRONGER TOGETHER This also changes how we think about resilience. Resilience is often framed as an individual quality: determination, persistence or personal toughness. But women entrepreneurs do not survive adverse contexts through individual effort alone. They survive through relationships. A trusted family member who helps with childcare or shop work, a neighbour who introduces customers, a WhatsApp group that shares supplier information, or a Facebook page that brings orders can all become part of the hidden infrastructure of business continuity. The implications are important for policymakers, universities, support organisations and development agencies. If business support is built only around formal professional networks, it may miss the very networks that women already use and trust. Support programmes need to take these everyday networks seriously. This could mean designing womenfriendly peer communities, supporting digital skills and online market access, working with family and community structures rather than ignoring them, and making formal networks more inclusive, affordable, local, and responsive. CHANGING MINDSETS It also means asking better questions. Instead of asking only whether women entrepreneurs are connected to formal networks, we should ask which networks work, for whom and under what conditions? A chamber of commerce may be useful for one entrepreneur but irrelevant or inaccessible to another. A small online community may offer more immediate support than a prestigious association. A family network may provide the trust and flexibility that formal institutions cannot. For women entrepreneurs in adverse Global South contexts like Bangladesh, the right network is not always the official one. Sometimes it is the relationship that offers trust, timely help and practical access. Sometimes it is the digital connection that allows a business to reach customers without crossing restrictive social boundaries. Recognising these “unexpected networks” helps us see women’s entrepreneurship not as isolated individual struggle, but as a relational achievement built through care, trust, adaptation and everyday resilience. FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 41 Dr Sharmin Nahar is a Lecturer in Entrepreneurship in the Department of Entrepreneurship and Strategy at Lancaster University Management School. Her research focuses on entrepreneurship, gender, digital innovation, SMEs and sustainable development in Global South contexts. This article draws on data collected from Bangladesh as a representative Global South context and is based on research by Dr Sharmin Nahar, of Lancaster University Management School; Dr Mohammed Shamsul Karim, of Essex Business School; and Professor Vania Sena, of Sheffield University Management School, published as How Do Unexpected Networks Help Female Entrepreneurs in the Global South Survive in Adverse Contexts? A Case Study of Bangladesh in Gender, Work & Organization. s.nahar@lancaster.ac.uk
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