Women and entrepreneurship: Focus on slum neighborhoods of the developing world

Despite considerable scholarly attention to entrepreneurship and poverty, research linking women’s entrepreneurship and poverty in slum neighborhoods has been slow to progress. Drawing on an entrepreneurship–poverty nexus and regression results on 12,519 observations, we theorize women’s everyday entrepreneurship in Kenya’s slum neighborhoods. Our analysis offers theoretical insights into the complexities of necessity-driven everyday entrepreneurship in which women are dominant. We distinguish women’s entrepreneurial activities that are embedded in slum systems of everyday entrepreneurship and focused exclusively on a tapestry of essential goods and services, including labor, fuel, energy (for example, charcoal), water, food, and farming. This understanding translates women’s entrepreneurial engagements into quantifiable socio-economic outcomes suitable for slum-like conditions where government resources are considered too few to support basic needs. This has academic, social, and policy implications.