Abstract
This article explores women’s entrepreneurship research conducted in Zimbabwe. For this purpose, a literature review approach was adopted where all journal articles published between 1990 and 2018 that addressed the issues of women entrepreneurship in Zimbabwe were searched and analysed. The articles were searched on Google Scholar using the following keywords: women entrepreneurs, women small business owners, women in informal sector and Zimbabwe. In total, 11 articles were retrieved, indicating a dearth of research studies on women entrepreneurship, particularly from the formal sector perspective, giving a glimpse of the entrepreneurship landscape in Zimbabwe. The content analysis of the selected articles resulted in the identification of eight themes: (1) feminism perspective, (2) informal sector trading, (3) motivations for entrepreneurship, (4) entrepreneurship characteristics, (5) obstacles in entrepreneurship, (6) socio-cultural challenges, (7) cross-border trading and (8) coping strategies within the context of women entrepreneurship in Zimbabwe. Discussions on these themes were situated within the broader literature and trends on existing women entrepreneurship literature. The study has implications at a practical and theoretical level. Supporting women entrepreneurship has positive effects on poverty reduction in agreement with the Sustainable Development Goals, and this study suggests women’s empowerment to operate at higher echelons of the business sector with bespoke support mechanism that fosters sustainable development. Also, the study proposed suggestions for future research on women entrepreneurship in Zimbabwe and other African countries.
Highlights
Women entrepreneurship is one of the fastest-growing entrepreneurial populations, which contribute significantly towards innovation, employment and wealth creation worldwide (Brush & Cooper 2012)
A literature review approach was conducted where all journal articles that were published between 1990 and 2018 that addressed the issues of women entrepreneurship in Zimbabwe were searched on Google Scholar (GS)
The following themes were identified: feminism and entrepreneurship, informal sector trading, motivation for entrepreneurship, characteristics of the entrepreneurs, obstacles to women entrepreneurship, socio-cultural challenges, women cross-border trading and the strategies adopted by women
Summary
Women entrepreneurship is one of the fastest-growing entrepreneurial populations, which contribute significantly towards innovation, employment and wealth creation worldwide (Brush & Cooper 2012). Different theoretical approaches have explored entrepreneurship from the behaviour and contribution of entrepreneurs and their firms, from economics, personality traits, psychodynamic, social-psychological, cognitive and sociological perspective (Ferreira et al 2017; Ndoro & Van Niekerk 2019; Storey & Greene 2010; Westhead et al 2011). The approach suggests that the behaviour of individuals change throughout their life, with their interactions with specific reference groups in different social contexts shaping their http://www.td-sa.net personalities (Ndoro & Van Niekerk 2019) This approach acknowledges that personality traits may be difficult to change (Kuratko et al 2015; Westhead et al 2011). One way of achieving this is to encourage informal businesses to register with the government, so that they can benefit from formalised support mechanisms such as business loans and skills and training development programmes.
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