Impact of women's home-based enterprise on family dynamics:Evidence from Jordan

Within developing and disadvantaged economies, women’s self-employment has been identified as a tool to assist in alleviating poverty and empowering individual women. To explore these arguments, this article considers the experiences of Palestinian women who operate home-based enterprises within conservative patriarchal families. Empirically, we drew upon a study of 43 home-based female embroiderers, all members of the ‘1967 displaced Palestinian community’ now living in Amman, Jordan. From the evidence, it emerges that although these women make a critical contribution to family incomes, their entrepreneurial activities are constructed around the preservation of the traditional family form such that while some degree of empowerment is attained, challenges to embedded patriarchy are limited