Encouraging female entrepreneurship in Jordan: environmental factors, obstacles and challenges

The number of female entrepreneurs and their contribution to the economy is steadily rising. Yet research suggests that female entrepreneurs face more challenges and barriers than their male counterparts. This is expected to be even more prevalent in Islamic contexts, which are characterised by conservative and patriarchal societies. In this research, 254 female business students from a private and a public university responded to a questionnaire that gauges their perceptions about potential barriers to entrepreneurship in Jordan and whether the business education they are receiving helps to prepare them for future entrepreneurial activity. Our results help to form a basis on which a deeper understanding of the phenomena can be achieved through more in depth future research. Among the main environmental factors that worry potential female entrepreneurs are the weakness of Jordanian economy, lack of finance, fear of risk, gender inequality and inability to maintain a work and private life balance. Our results also show that students are really not aware of the opportunities available to them and are unable to make a proper assessment. We call on both universities and the Jordanian government to put more emphasis on practical entrepreneurial education and encouraging women to play a much more active role within the workforce

Nineteenth-Century Female Entrepreneurship in Turkey

This chapter offers a state-of-the-art overview of historical research on women’s roles as business actors in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Muslim women in the late Ottoman Empire. Very few historical studies examine women’s roles in business in the Middle East. After explaining why this has been the case, the chapter presents a survey of the literature on women’s economic activities in the Ottoman Empire before the nineteenth century. This chapter also draws attention to the role of women as founders and managers of an Islamic institution, charitable endowment or waqf, and explores how this institution served as a form of social entrepreneurship, linking revenue-generating activities with the social needs. The chapter concludes with evidence on women’s business involvement during the long nineteenth century