Gendered entrepreneurial ecosystems and entrepreneurial agency: women's artisanal microenterprises in Chinchero, Cusco, Peru

Purpose This study examines how gendered constraints shape women's entrepreneurial agency within artisanal microenterprises in the textile handicraft sector in Peru, challenging dominant assumptions that position entrepreneurship as a direct pathway to empowerment. Drawing on the perspective of gendered entrepreneurial ecosystems, the study analyses how institutional arrangements, social norms and power relations influence women's entrepreneurial processes, stakeholder interactions and access to opportunities. By situating these dynamics within broader social, cultural, economic and institutional contexts, the study explains how gendered structures produce differentiated and contextually constrained forms of entrepreneurial agency. Design/methodology/approach This study adopts a non-experimental qualitative design with a descriptive and exploratory approach, suitable for understanding the complexity of women's artisanal microentrepreneurship within gendered contexts. Fieldwork included 13 in-depth interviews with key actors of the microenterprise ecosystem and two focus groups with 10 women textile microentrepreneurs. In addition, participant observation was conducted in the district of Chinchero, Cusco, Peru, enabling a contextualized understanding of social practices, gendered dynamics and lived experiences. Findings The study provides insights into the ecosystem of women-led artisanal microenterprises in a Latin American developing context and identifies three distinct types of artisan microentrepreneurs. The findings demonstrate how gendered constraints shape differences in autonomy, access to resources and sustainability across these types, producing differentiated entrepreneurial trajectories and forms of entrepreneurial agency. The study also highlights the role of organizational forms and stakeholder interactions in mediating access to opportunities and shaping sustainability outcomes and develops a conceptual framework derived from the empirical findings that explains the relationships between entrepreneurial typologies, contextual conditions, stakeholder interactions and sustainability outcomes. Originality/value This study contributes to the literature on gender and entrepreneurship by advancing a process-oriented and gendered understanding of artisanal microentrepreneurship in a culturally embedded context. Focusing on women-led textile microenterprises in rural Peru, it demonstrates how gendered constraints and institutional conditions shape differentiated entrepreneurial trajectories and forms of entrepreneurial agency. By linking artisan typologies, contextual factors and stakeholder dynamics within a gendered entrepreneurial ecosystem perspective, the study challenges dominant assumptions of empowerment and reconceptualizes entrepreneurial agency as a relational and context-dependent process in developing economies.