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This study aims to delve into the lived experiences, challenges and visions of women entrepreneurs in Jordan, placing a magnifying glass on those spearheading or co-pioneering start-ups. It aims to understand the myriad factors that influence their entrepreneurial journey, from motivation to the future of their niche.

Adopting a qualitative lens, this study is anchored in semi-structured interviews encompassing 20 Jordanian women entrepreneurs. Following this, thematic analysis was deployed to dissect and categorize the garnered insights into ten salient themes.

The study reveals that personal experiences and challenges are pivotal in directing these women towards niche markets, aligning with the theory of planned behaviour (TPB). Tools such as digital instruments, customer feedback and innovative strategies like storytelling and augmented reality are integral to their entrepreneurial success, resonating with the resource-based view (RBV). Additionally, challenges like cultural barriers and infrastructural limitations are navigated through adaptive strategies, reflecting the resilience inherent in these entrepreneurs. Networking, mentorship, embracing technological advancements and implementing sustainable practices are highlighted as crucial elements underpinned by the social identity theory (SIT).

Contrary to the extant body of research, this study provides new insights into the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs in Jordan, highlighting the practical relevance of theories like TPB, RBV and SIT for both policymakers and the start-up community in niche markets.

This paper seeks to systematically review and synthesise existing research knowledge on African women entrepreneurship to identify gaps for future studies.

The paper conducted a systematic literature review of published studies from 1990 to 2020 on women entrepreneurship in Africa using a 5M gender aware framework of Brush et al. (2009).

The systematic literature review of published studies found the fragmentation, descriptive and prescriptive orientation of studies on Africa women entrepreneurship and devoid of theoretical focus. Further, women entrepreneurship studies tended to be underpinned from various disciplines, less from the entrepreneurship lens, mostly quantitative, and at its infancy stage of development. With a primary focus on development, enterprise performance and livelihood, studies rarely attended to issues of motherhood and the nuanced understanding of women entrepreneurship’s embeddedness in family and institutional contexts of Africa.

The paper questions the view that women entrepreneurship is a “panacea” and unravels how family context, customary practices, poverty and, rural-urban and formal/informal divide, significantly shape and interact with African women entrepreneurs’ enterprising experience and firm performance.

The findings and analyses indicate that any initiatives to support women empowerment via entrepreneurship should consider the socially constructed nature of women entrepreneurship and the subtle interplay of the African institutional contexts’ intricacies, spatial and locational differences which significantly influence women entrepreneurs’ choices, motivations and goals for enterprising.

The paper contributes to a holistic understanding of women entrepreneurship in Africa by using a 5M framework to review the research knowledge. In addition, the paper not only identifies unexplored/or less examined issues but also questions the taken-for-granted assumptions of existing knowledge and suggest adoption of context- and gender-sensitive theories and methods.

Personality characteristics have a significant impact on the economic segment of women entrepreneurs. Due to gender biases or other factors, women entrepreneurs are fewer in India than in other countries. The purpose of this study is to identify the personality factors and challenges that affect their growth and success.

Logistic regression was used to show the impact of personality characteristics and firm performance and the moderating effect of challenges between personality characteristics and firm performance.

The findings revealed a significant impact of personality factors on firm performance, the absence of moderating effects of challenges and the presence of a mediation effect of enterprise age and enterprise location.

This research will help policymakers adopt policies and plans to reduce obstacles and challenges so that the economic conditions of women’s entrepreneurship can transform.

Women in the 21st century still live in a male-dominated patriarchal society because they face the problem of financial capital.

The results show the impact of personality traits and challenges on the firm performance of women’s entrepreneurship.

This study aims to determine the impact of innovation conviction, innovation mindset and innovation creed on the need for achievement and the success of women entrepreneurs. The study also investigates the impact of entrepreneurial education in moderating the relationship between the need for achievement and women’s entrepreneurial success.

The study used a structured questionnaire and a quantitative research design. Data were gathered from 304 women entrepreneurs in South Africa’s Gauteng province. The data were analysed using smart partial least squares.

The results showed that innovation conviction, innovation mindset and innovation creed have positive and significant impacts on the need for achievement. It was also discovered that the need for achievement and entrepreneurial education have a positive and significant impact on women's entrepreneurial success. Moreover, the results showed that entrepreneurial education had a positive and significant moderating effect on the nexus between the need for achievement and women's entrepreneurial success.

By comprehensively examining the impact of innovation conviction, innovation mindset and innovation creed on the need for achievement and women's entrepreneurial success, this study has valuable implications for academics.

This research will add to the corpus of information on women's entrepreneurship and small business management in Africa, which is generally overlooked by academics in developing countries.

Mainland Tanzania has seen two decades of significant social policy reforms and transformations in its social and economic structures, whilst the country continues to grapple with persisting gender inequalities. This article examines Tanzania's social policy developments from a gender perspective. The authors analyse the level, reach and quality of social policy delivery to working-age women across the areas of health policy, social protection and employment policy during 2000–2021.

The article draws on qualitative research deploying the scoping review method. The data consist of diverse secondary materials, including academic publications, government policy documents, relevant statistics and other types of “grey” literature.

Tanzania has made significant advancements in the legal frameworks around welfare provision and has instituted increasingly gender-responsive government policy plans. The health and social protection sectors, in particular, have witnessed the introduction of large-scale measures expanding social policy implementation. However, social policy delivery remains two-tiered, with differences in provisions for women in the formal and informal sectors.

Social policy delivery and implementation have increased and diversified in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) during the new millennium, with a growing integration of gender-specific policy objectives. However, limited social policy scholarship has focused on the gendered effects of broader social policy models in SSA. The article remedies the concomitant knowledge gaps by examining various social policies and their impacts on working-age women in Mainland Tanzania. The authors also engage with the theoretical welfare regime literature and present an analytical framework for gender-sensitive assessment of emerging social policy models in the Global South.

Adopting an institutional view of entrepreneurship, this study aims to explore the potential mediating role of entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) in the relationship between subjective norms and the entrepreneurial intentions of Malaysian students. Additionally, social role theory (SRT) was used to examine whether gender acts as a boundary condition in the proposed relationship.

Empirical evidence was based on responses from 220 final-year students registered from a final-year entrepreneurship module at a private university in Malaysia. The hypothesised relationships were tested using Model 7 of the PROCESS macro.

The findings indicated that subjective norms had a weak but positive effect on the entrepreneurial intentions of Malaysian students. Moreover, ESE was found to mediate the relationship between subjective norms and entrepreneurial intentions. However, contrary to theoretical expectations, gender did not act as a boundary condition in the proposed mediation relationship.

By incorporating SRT with institutional theory, this study sought to address a knowledge gap in the existing literature by investigating and empirically exploring the moderating influence of gender on the mediating effect of ESE in the relationship between subjective norms and entrepreneurial intentions.

This study explores whether targeted microcredit can effectively alleviate households’ multidimensional relative poverty (MdRP) in rural China in the new era following the poverty elimination campaign and discusses it from a gendered perspective.

This study applies a fixed-effects model, propensity score matching (PSM) and two-stage instrumental variable method to two-period panel data collected from 611 households in rural western China in 2018 and 2021 to explore the effects, mechanisms and heterogenous performance of targeted microcredit on households’ MdRP in the new era.

(i) Targeted microcredit can alleviate MdRP among rural households in the new era, mainly by reducing income and opportunity inequality. (ii) Targeted microcredit can promote women’s empowerment, mainly by enhancing their social participation, thereby helping alleviate households’ MdRP. The effect of the targeted microcredit on MdRP is more significant in medium-educated women households and non-left-behind women households. (iii) The MdRP alleviation effect is stronger in villages with a high degree of digitalization.

Learn from the experience of targeted microcredit. Accurately identify poor groups and integrate loan design into financial health and women empowerment. Particularly, pay attention to less-educated and left-behind women households and strengthen coordination between targeted microcredit and digital village strategies.

This study clarifies the effect of targeted microcredit on women’s empowerment and households’ MdRP alleviation in the new era. It also explores its various effects on households with different female characteristics and regional digitalization levels, providing ideas for optimizing microcredit.

This paper examines whether household economic status mediates the effect of microcredit on entrepreneurial success amongst women microcredit clients and if this effect is conditional on the borrower’s marital status.

This cross-sectional study uses primary data collected through a structured questionnaire from microcredit borrowers in Tanzania. The selection of the respondents for the survey involved categorising them based on their loan amount and length of membership in the program and randomly picking them for study participation. To realise the study objective, we used the moderated mediation model and employed the Linear-Based Regression Model 8 of the Hayes PROCESS macro V4.1 for SPSS.

The findings show that the loan amount and household economic status positively and significantly affect entrepreneurial success. However, the effect of microcredit on entrepreneurial success is mediated by household economic status. On the other hand, the direct and indirect effects of microcredit on entrepreneurial success differ depending on the borrowers' marital status, with married borrowers being negatively affected.

Microfinance supporters suggest that microcredit is vital for enterprise development and other socioeconomic outcomes. However, the results are inconclusive, including the role of household economic status. This study provides empirical insights into the moderated mediation effect of household economic status on the relationship between microcredit and entrepreneurial success. The study’s findings and limitations suggest considering not only microcredit and related factors but also the essential role of family factors in future research and design of microfinance services in efforts to support and grow microcredit-assisted women-owned businesses.

The academic literature on women’s entrepreneurship in the internationalization of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) continues to increase, possibly due to the enormous potential of women’s entrepreneurship to promote social empowerment and economic growth in a country. This study aims to systematically review existing research on women’s entrepreneurship in the internationalization of SMEs and provide a robust understanding of academic developments in this field. This study also aims to identify and explore key thematic areas within the research field related to women’s entrepreneurship in SME internationalization.

This study selected 62 articles retrieved from the four databases (Scopus, Web of Science, EBSCO and Google Scholar). Content analysis was conducted to identify key research issues and gaps, which were then mapped on cluster themes. VOSviewer was used to represent the research cluster themes visually.

This study identifies and discusses six research streams related to the concept of women’s entrepreneurship in SME internationalization: export behavior and gender in SMEs; entrepreneurship and country economic development; gender, innovation and performance in SME internationalization; women entrepreneurship in international business and management research; internationalization process of SMEs; and business experience and export experience. Some topics that emerged as potential for future research include personal and organizational dynamics, internationalization behavior, decision-making, adoption of strategies or technologies and orientation toward international markets.

This study offers valuable insights for policymakers and stakeholders aiming to foster women’s entrepreneurship within the internationalization landscape of SMEs. The findings provide a roadmap for identifying underexplored areas in women’s entrepreneurship within SME internationalization, guiding future research initiatives.