Women’s entrepreneurship in the informal economy
A socio-spatial perspective
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9889656 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mirela Xheneti (0000-0002-7275-7374, University of Sussex Business School, UK,, corresponding author), Adrian Madden (0000-0002-3193-5808, University of York, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 78 |
| Issue | 9 |
| Pages | 1123-1162 |
| Publication date | 2025-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Human Relations (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-7267 • E-ISSN: 1741-282X |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/00187267241288661 |
| OpenAlex | W4403795991 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 91 |
What role does ‘space’ play in shaping entrepreneurial choices? Much of the western-centric evidence offers abstract models of spatial dynamics, reflecting socio-cultural assumptions about entrepreneurship and the need to fix ‘women’s deficits’, within formal representations of space. We problematize these views by focusing on the everyday realities of women involved in (informal) entrepreneurial activities in a developing country context, exploring their contradictions with the abstract representations of the informal economy and the development policy goals of reforming women’s work through formalization. Based on Lefebvre’s conceptualization of space to explore these contradictions, we draw on empirical data from entrepreneurs in the informal economy in Nepal, where the International Labour Organisation reports that almost 85% of the economically active population to be in informal employment. We offer an entrepreneurial narrative that focuses on women’s work on the maintenance of local attachments and connections, underpinned by reciprocity, moral obligation and indebtedness often appropriated or disrupted by development strategies. By placing emphasis on informal spatial dynamics, we provide empirical support for the limitations of a policy approach that renders women’s work invisible through its homogenizing economic focus, to contribute towards a richer theorization of entrepreneurial contexts
Economic geography · Economic growth · Economic system · Economics · Entrepreneurship · Informal sector · Perspective (graphical · Sociology · Computer Science · Entrepreneurship Studies and Influences · Innovation and Socioeconomic Development · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy
Contextualizing Entrepreneurship Theory
Gender and entrepreneurship
Capitalism’s Crisis of Care
Extending the Boundaries
Researcher Positionality - A Consideration of Its Influence and Place in Qualitative Research - A New Researcher Guide
Entrepreneurship as a solution to extreme poverty
You Say Illegal, I Say Legitimate
Women entrepreneurs in and from developing countries
The Role of Gender Stereotypes in Perceptions of Entrepreneurs and Intentions to Become an Entrepreneur
Why Research on Women Entrepreneurs Needs New Directions
Contextualizing Entrepreneurship—Conceptual Challenges and Ways Forward
Annual review article
Seeking Qualitative Rigor in Inductive Research
The Politics of Subversion in Development Practice
Contemporary Environmental Problems in Nepal
Reversed Realities
Misteri i Kapitalit
Gender Trouble
The interplay of context and entrepreneurship
Three waves and counting
Himalayan BRI
A gender‐aware framework for women's entrepreneurship
Exploring the “feminisation of poverty” in relation to women’s work and home-based enterprise in slums of the Global South
Gender dynamics and rural household strategies
Problematizing the “informal sector”
Emotional labour
Gender, Financial Deepening and the Production of Embodied Finance
Institutional Demand-Side Discrimination Against Women and the Human Capital Model
The Social Construction of Space and Gender
Becoming ‘Real’ Entrepreneurs
Gender, caste, and spatiality
Helping a Large Number of People Become a Little Less Poor’
Ground-Truthing” Representations of Social Space
Negotiating spaces of marginality and independence
Spaces of Labor Activism, Mexican-American Women and the Farm Worker Movement in South Texas Since 1966
Exploring the false promise of entrepreneurship through a postfeminist critique of the enterprise policy discourse in Sweden and the UK
A Web of opportunity or the same old story? Women digital entrepreneurs and intersectionality theory
Muslim businesswomen doing boundary work
Neo-liberalism, markets and class structures on the Nepali lowlands
The gender of debt and space
Challenging the boundaries of entrepreneurship
The concept of ‘the everyday’
Recovery and adaptation after the 2015 Nepal earthquakes
Formalization and its Discontents
Interpretive Interactionism
Out of the shadows? Formalisation approaches to informal economic activity
Space, Theory, and Hegemony
Doing Gender, Doing Entrepreneurship
Cultures of Economies
Place and Space
Caste System
An anthropological perspective on contextualizing entrepreneurship
Bodies, sensations, space and time
Street vendors, and postmodernity
Everyday economic geographies
Lucrative Disaster
The Moral Economy Is a Double-edged Sword
Modernization, Cultural Change, and the Persistence of Traditional Values
From Commoning to Debt
Informality, global production networks and the dynamics of 'adverse incorporation
Thirdspace
Moral Economy, Political Economy, and the Culture of Entrepreneurship in Highland Nepal
The Informal Sector in Jinja, Uganda
Democracy, Democracies and Democracy Discourses in Nepal
The Moral Economy of the Peasant
People as Infrastructure
Proposing the 'Miracle' Narrative Framework for Providing Thick Description in Qualitative Research
Moral economy
The Constitution of Space
Territory and Territoriality in the Global Economy
Reciprocity as a Principle of Exclusion
Why do Post-Civil War Countries Fast-Track Gender Quotas? The Case of Nepal
A Space for Place in Sociology
Un Favorzote
The Everyday Life of Security
The Infrastructure of Intimacy
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 3 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |