Readiness, resilience and the ripple effect: women-owned enterprise in Kenya and the promise of global inclusion

Abstract

Transnational corporations are recasting themselves as midwives of women’s empowerment rather than vehicles of exploitation, pledging their supply chains as platforms of inclusive capitalism rather than conduits of adverse incorporation. In this contribution we interrogate that corporate promise of inclusion empirically, examining both the corporate apparatus of gender empowerment and the experiences of women entrepreneurs they claim to empower. Through a case study of a small women-owned enterprise in Nairobi, on its journey to inclusion in one of the world’s largest corporate supply chains, we chronicle the efforts of women entrepreneurs to be made ‘ready’ for the rewards of inclusion in the global marketplace. While TNCs invoke the shibboleth of inclusive markets – seeking to capture the moral currency it nets them – we reveal how the conversion to global supplier leaves small enterprises in Africa leveraged and dependent rather than secure and autonomous. In the end, we argue, the inclusive market becomes a vehicle of failed hopes and corporate control.