Social enterprising by and for women in East Africa
Publication date: 7 November 2016
Abstract
Subject area
The subject areas are social entrepreneurship, gender, institutions and emerging markets.
Study level/applicability
Bachelor, Master, PhD.
Case overview
Some of the fastest growing economies in the world are situated in East Africa. However, there are many institutional challenges. The societies are, for example, heavily patriarchal. Women are, hence, in a particularly vulnerable situation. This is the case of one woman entrepreneur who views the support of other, less educated, women as a main part of her venture. She is a highly educated woman, who has lived part of her life in the USA. Her father is an influential person in the city. She does not need to work at all for her livelihood. She wants the women in her country to have a chance to become economically independent from men. Therefore, she uses her expertise in chemistry to help groups of rural women to make soap and other beauty products from local plants. The case not only illustrates the institutional challenges and how the macro-level institutions affect micro level action but also illustrates the agency enabled by networks and a more fortunate class background. It is an example of a contextually embedded social entrepreneurship process, with simultaneously good and bad odds.
Expected learning outcomes
Main learning objectives are the importance of avoiding both ethnocentrism and androcentrism when analyzing driving forces, processes and decision-making among social entrepreneurs. After having processed this case, students should be able to: critically and independently discuss the context dependence of driving forces and processes of social entrepreneurship; critically and independently discuss the gendering of driving forces and processes of social entrepreneurship; and understand and discuss the prerequisites for social entrepreneurship for different groups in a given society, including the class and gender dimensions and the intersection between these dimensions.
Subject code
CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The studies underlying this case description were made possible by the Swedish Research Council. The author also wishes to acknowledge feedback given by colleagues at her home department.
Citation
Tillmar, M. (2016), "Social enterprising by and for women in East Africa", , Vol. 6 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/EEMCS-03-2016-0036
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2016, Emerald Group Publishing Limited