Mary Johnson Osirim investigates the business and personal experiences of women entrepreneurs in Harare and Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, to understand their successes, challenges, and contributions to development. These businesswomen work in the microenterprise sector—which is defined as businesses that employ five workers or fewer—with many working as market traders, crocheters, seamstresses, and hairdressers. The women who took part in Osirim's research during the 1990s pursued their businesses, reinvested profits, engaged in innovation, and provided employment, and through their work supported households and extended family and social networks. Osirim finds that, despite major problems, the Zimbabwean businesswomen maintained their enterprises and their households and managed to contribute in significant ways to their community and national development in the face of an economic structural adjustment program. Osirim also explores the impact of state and non-governmental organizations on small business operations. Enterprising Women in Urban Zimbabwe offers a comprehensive study of women's role as entrepreneurs in the microeconomic sector that shows them as agents during challenging political and economic times.

This book brings together new household and enterprise data from 41 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa to inform policy makers and practitioners about ways to expand women entrepreneurs' economic opportunities. Women's empowerment is recognized as the third millennium development goal; in 2012 the World Bank dedicated its annual flagship, the World Development Report, to gender equality and development (World Bank 2011); and the Nobel prize for peace was awarded to three pioneering women (two from Liberia) working for peace in their countries' fights for democracy and for greater opportunities for women. This book focuses attention on Sub-Saharan Africa, and specifically on entrepreneurship in the nonagricultural sector. The issue of gender disparities in economic opportunities in the region has been studied in terms of gaps in wage income and in job sorting in wage work (Arbache, Kolev, and Filipiak 2010; Fafchamps, Soderbom, and Benhassine 2009; Kolev and Sirven 2010). Other cross-country work has looked at entrepreneurship in Sub-Saharan Africa, but rarely with much attention paid to gender (Bigsten and Soderbom 2006; Tybout 2000; World Bank 2004). But entrepreneurship is where women in Sub-Saharan Africa are most active outside of agriculture. So it is critical to look at entrepreneurship to understand the extent of gender disparities in economic opportunities, determine the underlying reasons for these gender patterns, and develop an agenda to enable more women to realize their full potential.

Women are now leading companies and other enterprises in significant numbers—in developing countries as well as the Western world. This set examines the specific ways in which entrepreneurial women create success and considers how the growing prevalence of female entrepreneurs will change the world. This two-volume work provides balanced and thorough coverage of women entrepreneurs in multicultural and international contexts as well as in the Western world. Entrepreneurial Women: New Management and Leadership Models explores how women everywhere are empowering themselves socially and economically through entrepreneurship and business ownership. The contributors consider how discrimination against women in the workplace can contribute to the inspiration to become business owners in the first place and document the experiences of African American women entrepreneurs as well as women in distinct settings such as China, Africa, rural Jamaica, and Silicon Valley. The work draws on empirical studies, data sets, case studies, and descriptions of career trajectories to portray the realities of women entrepreneurs today. Readers will understand the distinctive challenges and opportunities involved with the entrepreneurship process for women-owned businesses, grasp how women have overcome their disadvantages in getting funding and accessing capital, and learn about the unique management and leadership style of women entrepreneurs.

The literature on female entrepreneurship inWest Africa is vast and still growing. Historical accounts of precolonial West Africa indicate that women played a critical role in the development of market trading in the region, particularly in local and near-distant markets. The literature on Ghanaian market women, in particular, portrays urban traders as forming a robust entrepreneurial class. Traders in Southern Ghana have developed elaborate systems of accumulating capital, and they have used their matrilineal kinship ties to secure long-lasting economic relationships that enable them to develop their businesses, withstand economic hardship more effectively, and plan for exit and retirement from the market. The picture presented of Ghanaian culture is one in which women, though subordinate to men, are still supported as entrepreneurs.

In the global South there is potential for politics to marginalize the diverse perspectives of subaltern communities. Exploring ongoing and new feminist dialogues in the global South, this book examines the ways in which dominant epistemologies are challenged, unique identities formed, and the implications for the global feminist agenda.

A tapestry of innovation, ideas, and commerce, Africa and its entrepreneurial hubs are deeply connected to those of the past. Moses E. Ochonu and an international group of contributors explores the lived experiences of African innovators who have created value for themselves and their communities. Profiles of vendors, farmers, craftspeople, healers, spiritual consultants, warriors, musicians, technological innovators, political mobilizers, and laborers featured in this volume show African models of entrepreneurship in action. As a whole, the essays consider the history of entrepreneurship in Africa, illustrating its multiple origins and showing how it differs from the Western capitalist experience. As they establish historical patterns of business creativity, these explorations open new avenues for understanding indigenous enterprise and homegrown commerce and their relationship to social, economic, and political debates in Africa today.