How do female entrepreneurs acquire entrepreneurial skills? The inadvertent role of patriarchy

Peprah, Augustine Awuah, Atarah, Bede Akorige and Liedong, Tahiru Azaaviele (2024) How do female entrepreneurs acquire entrepreneurial skills? The inadvertent role of patriarchy. Academy of Management Proceedings. (doi:10.5465/AMPROC.2024.18499abstract).

Record type: Meeting abstract

Abstract

The question of how female entrepreneurs develop entrepreneurial skills in patriarchal societies remains critical for researchers and policymakers. We use interviews in Ghana to explore how female entrepreneurs’ navigation of patriarchy affects where and how they acquire entrepreneurial dexterity and managerial capabilities. Our findings reveal three socialization contexts (i.e., nuclear family, extended family, and community) from which three gendered skills are acquired (i.e., domestic submissiveness, domestic judgement, and domestic bricolage). The findings also show how the utilization of these three skills are mapped to three entrepreneurship phases (i.e., opportunity recognition, opportunity evaluation, and opportunity exploitation) and how their leverage in the entrepreneurship process is contingent on four feminine statuses (i.e., marriage, motherhood, divorcehood, and widowhood). These findings have important theoretical and practice implications.

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