Women's entrepreneurship and social capital: Exploring the link between the domestic sphere and the marketplace in Pakistan

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/jsc.2336
• Author: Muhammad Salman Khan
• Published date: 01 May 2020
• Date: 01 May 2020

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Women's entrepreneurship and social capital: Exploring

the link between the domestic sphere and the marketplace

in Pakistan

Muhammad Salman Khan

Centre for Enterprise and Economic

Development Research, Middlesex University,

London, UK

Correspondence

Muhammad Salman Khan, Centre for

Enterprise and Economic Development

Research, Middlesex University, London, UK.

Email: m.salman.k85@gmail.com

Abstract

Research on the social capital of women entrepreneurs in contexts characterized by

gender segregation between men's and women's trading spaces is underdeveloped.

The literature on women's entrepreneurship and the marketplace in Pakistan is one

such example. This article contributes to the literature on the social capital of female

entrepreneurs from a critical perspective by drawing on an exploratory case study of

women's entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial networks in the Malakand District of

the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Women's social capital was found to

play a crucial role in the survival and expansion of their business activities by facilitat-

ing access to the men's trading sphere of the marketplace. It was also found that

women exercise active agency in developing cross-gender economic networks but

do so in ways that do not overtly challenge social norms.

1|INTRODUCTION

This article contributes to the literature on the social capital (SC) of

women entrepreneurs in two major ways: firstly, by highlighting the

role of women's networks in the survival and expansion of women's

entrepreneurial activities and, secondly, by analyzing how women use

their agency to develop networks for gaining access to the market-

place (Lindvert, Patel, & Wincent, 2017; Roomi, 2013; Yetim, 2008).

The gender and entrepreneurship literature often overlooks the data-

gathering difficulties associated with research on female entrepre-

neurship in less-advanced economies (Henry, Foss, & Ahl, 2016,

p. 18). This fact has led to a significant gap in the literature on

women's entrepreneurial networks and the role these networks play

in connecting home-based activities, as a women's entrepreneurial

sphere, to markets, as a men's entrepreneurial sphere. Understanding

the role of these networks for women's entrepreneurial activities is

critical in contexts characterized by similar features to those in

Pakistan, where the cultural norms of parda (women's seclusion) and

izat (honor) restrict women's economic activities to the domestic

sphere (Al-Dajani & Marlow, 2013; Weiss, 1998). Women's entry to

markets as traders is culturally prohibited, and markets serve as men's

entrepreneurial sphere (Khan, 2019). Such research geographies trans-

late into a gender-segregated body of literature: women's entrepre-

neurship research is mainly by women, for women, and about women,

while studies on male entrepreneurship are mainly for men, by men,

and about men (Marlow & Martinez Dy, 2018, p. 3). The scarcity of

female researchers in the marketplace literature in Pakistan

(Amirali, 2017) and the infrequent presence of male scholars studying

women's entrepreneurship in the country (Roomi, 2013; Ullah,

Ahmad, Manzoor, Hussain, & Farooq, 2012) perhaps present one of

the best examples of this gender segregation within entrepreneurship

research (Khan, 2018). Drawing on Khan (2019), and presenting

empirical exploratory findings on women's entrepreneurship and

entrepreneurial networks, this study contributes to the literature on

women entrepreneurs and SC by exploring women's entrepreneurial

networks and their role in facilitating women's access to the market-

place in Pakistan (Lindvert et al., 2017; Roomi, 2013).

The gender dimension of the literatureon the SC of women entre-

preneursin Pakistan is especiallyunderdeveloped. This article,therefore,

focuses primarilyon women's SC. Not only is the literature on market-

placesand women's entrepreneurship“gend er-blind,”but so is the litera-

ture onthe SC of women entrepreneursin Pakistan (Smith, 1978,p. 172,

JEL classification codes: D1, L26, Y80, Z13.

DOI: 10.1002/jsc.2336

Strategic Change. 2020;29:375–387. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jsc © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 375