Entrepreneurial feminism in Kigali

Visvanathan Naicker,Simon Nsengimana

doi:10.48132/hdbr.323

Abstract

Entrepreneurship has been attributed to a masculine career in many economies. Rwanda was no exception to the discrimination of women in entrepreneurship. Due to gender, stereotype, and patriarchy, Rwandan women were not free in deciding to participate in entrepreneurial feminism. Some women became liberalists to break the glass ceiling to launch entrepreneurial feminism. They faced constraints that included a lack of entrepreneurship skills, market opportunity, and fear of failure. This article aimed to explore how gender affects new entrepreneurial feminism creation in Kigali. A quantitative approach used to collect survey data from 409 women-owned SMEs in Kigali were selected purposively. The findings indicated that most women-owned SMEs in Kigali started a necessary business due to unemployment. In contrast, those who needed time to care for their family while generating income launched the opportunity business. (64.3%) accepted permission from partners to start a business. While (24.9%) broke the glass ceiling. A lack of entrepreneurship skills was the major constraint they faced.

Highlights

A simple explanation of entrepreneurial feminism is that it promotes feminist values through the process of creating ventures, to improve the position of women in society
This may show a picture of entrepreneurial feminism in Kigali and how some industries are remaining in masculinity
18 years of age and older, Rwandan citizen and foreign nationals, speaking Kinyarwanda or English, a business must be one month old and older, a business must be SMEs, a business must be located in the city of Kigali (Gasabo, Kicukiro, and Nyarugenge District), and business must be in the importation, exportation, wholesale, retail, ICT, manufacturing, transport, agriculture, construction, and service sectors

Summary

Introduction

A simple explanation of entrepreneurial feminism is that it promotes feminist values through the process of creating ventures, to improve the position of women in society. Academia, and researchers agreed that the world is losing wealth due to the underrepresentation of females in the socio-economic mainstream of many developed and developing countries or paying females a lower salary compared to males for the same job performed (Amanda et al, 2019; Khadija et al, 2020; ILO, 2020) The latter may be attributed to gender stereotypes, patriarchy, cultural norms, and religious beliefs. Patriarchy, cultural norms, and religious beliefs oppressed Rwandan females in many socio-economic activities Despite their entrepreneurial intention, those downsides mentioned above hamper females to execute their entrepreneurship talent. Albeit with these obstacles, some of them launched entrepreneurial feminism

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Methods

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Conclusion