Household institution and Muslim women entrepreneurship : an exploration of the lived experiences of women entrepreneurs in Peshawar, Pakistan

• Main Author: Gohar, Madiha
• Published: University of Essex 2012
• Subjects: 338.63409549123
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.573699

Families and female owned enterprises are inextricably intertwined, resulting from both widely-observed factors that constrain female entrepreneurship worldwide and context-specific factors. However, as far as the contextual factors are concerned, the impact on female entrepreneurship of the household as an institution in its interaction with the wider environment remains an under-researched topic. This research aims to explore the 'lived experiences' of women entrepreneurs in the household context, in Peshawar, Pakistan, from an institutional perspective. This research sets out to explore three interrelated questions: How do the institutional dynamics (norms and values) of the household shape the entrepreneurial inclination of women? How do inter and intra household relationships influence women's ability to create venture? And to what extent are the growth aspirations of women entrepreneurs immersed and affected by the household and wider culture? The research framework developed for an investigation into these questions is centred on an exploration of multi-level embeddedness of women's entrepreneurial actions through an institutional theory lens. This research adopts a qualitative research design informed by the interpretivist paradigm that concerns the emergent nature of a phenomenon embedded in the entrepreneurial process. Data were collected from a sample of 35 women entrepreneurs through in-depth interviews and were thematically analysed to reach to the 'essence' of the entrepreneurs' 'lived experiences'. Findings reveal that the intricate interplay of social class, family system and the life cycle stage of women shape the relational and structural embeddedness and entrepreneurial actions. More specifically, this research finds that women's intentions to enterprise are deeply rooted in the family's perception of desirability of the entrepreneurial behaviour, that women's ability to 'negotiate' inter and intra-household gender-power dynamics prove to be one of the critical antecedents of venture creation, and that synchronisation of personal preferences with familial ~d social norms shapes growth aspirations and processes of women entrepreneurs in Peshawar.