IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/sagope/v10y2020i4p2158244020963131.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Lived Experiences of Females With Entrepreneurship in Sudan: Networking, Social Expectations, and Family Support

Author

Listed:
  • Ibrahim Said
  • Christine Enslin

Abstract

Extensive research exists on female entrepreneurship in developed countries such as North America and Europe; however, there is limited research on women entrepreneurs in African nations, specifically in Sudan. This descriptive phenomenological research was designed to explore, discover, and describe the perceptions and lived experiences of successful Sudanese female entrepreneurs concerning overcoming the challenges and obstacles faced in the beginning and managing new businesses in the region of Khartoum, capital of Sudan. This article uses the salient theories and concepts of entrepreneurship value creation theory, social role theory, challenges, and barriers facing women entrepreneurs. All these theories and concepts have been instrumental in understanding the lived experiences of challenges and barriers facing women entrepreneurs in Khartoum, Sudan. Data gathered from 19 female entrepreneurs purposively selected across Khartoum, Sudan, revealed that women struggle (a) having to secure funds; (b) society’s perception of suitable work for women; (c) access to networking; and (d) inadequate support from the government. The research also revealed that factors that influence factors to be successful are women’s family support and motivation; adjusting to social expectations. In addition to the strategies used to manage a successful business, there is a need for training and development skills and being persistent and believing in oneself. The research results showed that women experience mixed feelings during establishing and operating the business. The experience of women with the barriers and challenges includes fear, frustration, stress, and anger when they begin to manage the business. However, women also experienced positive feelings include risk-taking, courage, passion for learning, empowerment, fearlessness, ambition, determination, persistence, and believing in oneself. The women in this research were creative and initiative and managed to begin and operate a successful business.

Suggested Citation

  • Ibrahim Said & Christine Enslin, 2020. "Lived Experiences of Females With Entrepreneurship in Sudan: Networking, Social Expectations, and Family Support," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(4), pages 21582440209, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:sagope:v:10:y:2020:i:4:p:2158244020963131
    DOI: 10.1177/2158244020963131
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2158244020963131
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/2158244020963131?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dianne H. B. Welsh & Esra Memili & Eugene Kaciak & Saddiga Ahmed, 2013. "Sudanese Women Entrepreneurs," Journal of Developmental Entrepreneurship (JDE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 18(02), pages 1-18.
    2. Rakesh Belwal & Misrak Tamiru & Gurmeet Singh, 2012. "Microfinance and sustained economic improvement: Women small‐scale entrepreneurs in Ethiopia," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24, pages 84-99, January.
    3. Dianne Hb Welsh & Gyu Kim & Esra Memili & Eugene Kaciak, 2014. "The Influence Of Family Moral Support And Personal Problems On Firm Performance: The Case Of Korean Female Entrepreneurs," Journal of Developmental Entrepreneurship (JDE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 19(03), pages 1-17.
    4. Oriana Bandiera & Niklas Buehren & Robin Burgess & Markus Goldstein & Selim Gulesci & Imran Rasul & Munshi Sulaiman, 2020. "Women's Empowerment in Action: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial in Africa," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(1), pages 210-259, January.
    5. Imed Drine & Mouna Grach, 2012. "Supporting Women Entrepreneurs in Tunisia," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 24(3), pages 450-464, July.
    6. Evelyn Derera & Pepukayi Chitakunye & Charles O'Neill & Amandeep Tarkhar-Lail, 2014. "Gendered Lending Practices: Enabling South African Women Entrepreneurs to Access Start-Up Capital," Journal of Enterprising Culture (JEC), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 22(03), pages 313-330.
    7. Suwastika Naidu & Anand Chand, 2017. "National Culture, Gender Inequality and Women’s Success in Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 130(2), pages 647-664, January.
    8. Xuemei Xie & Jiuchang Lv, 2016. "Social networks of female tech-entrepreneurs and new venture performance: the moderating effects of entrepreneurial alertness and gender discrimination," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 12(4), pages 963-983, December.
    9. Alsen Florian Kapinga & Calkin Suero Montero, 2017. "Exploring the socio-cultural challenges of food processing women entrepreneurs in IRINGA, TANZANIA and strategies used to tackle them," Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research, Springer;UNESCO Chair in Entrepreneurship, vol. 7(1), pages 1-24, December.
    10. Dianne H. B. Welsh & Eugene Kaciak & Caroline Minialai, 2017. "The influence of perceived management skills and perceived gender discrimination in launch decisions by women entrepreneurs," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 1-33, March.
    11. Amanda Bullough, 2013. "Perceptions Of Women Entrepreneurs In Male-Dominated Leadership Cultures: More Positive Support For Women Than Many Thought," Journal of Enterprising Culture (JEC), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 21(03), pages 359-374.
    12. Lindsey N. Godwin & Christopher E. Stevens & Nurete L. Brenner, 2006. "Forced to Play by the Rules? Theorizing how Mixed–Sex Founding Teams Benefit Women Entrepreneurs in Male–Dominated Contexts," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 30(5), pages 623-642, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ahmad Raza Bilal & Pierfelice Rosato & Raffaele Campo & Rossella Leopizzi, 2023. "Women empowerment and entrepreneurial intention: A pathway to achieve sustainable development goal (SDG‐5)," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 30(3), pages 1389-1405, May.
    2. Advera Gibe ROCHE & John N. JECKONIAH & Fatihiya A. MASSAWE, 2023. "Gendered Factors And Small-Scale Fish Business Growth In Mwanza, Tanzania," Business Excellence and Management, Faculty of Management, Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania, vol. 13(2), pages 80-96, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ojong, Nathanael & Simba, Amon & Dana, Leo-Paul, 2021. "Female entrepreneurship in Africa: A review, trends, and future research directions," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 233-248.
    2. Dianne H. B. Welsh & Eugene Kaciak, 2019. "Family enrichment and women entrepreneurial success: the mediating effect of family interference," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 15(4), pages 1045-1075, December.
    3. Dianne H. B. Welsh & Eugene Kaciak, 2018. "Women’s entrepreneurship: A model of business-family interface and performance," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 627-637, September.
    4. Brixiová, Zuzana & Kangoye, Thierry & Said, Mona, 2020. "Training, human capital, and gender gaps in entrepreneurial performance," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 367-380.
    5. Jiang, Yiqi & Jiang, Zhou & Chen, Zhijun, 2024. "Women entrepreneurship in China: A bibliometric literature review and future research agenda," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).
    6. Veland Ramadani & Léo-Paul Dana & Nora Sadiku-Dushi & Vanessa Ratten & Dianne H. B. Welsh, 2017. "Decision-Making Challenges of Women Entrepreneurship in Family Business Succession Process," Journal of Enterprising Culture (JEC), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 25(04), pages 411-439, December.
    7. Golda Anambane & Kwame Adom, 2018. "Assessing The Role Of Culture In Female Entrepreneurship In Contemporary Sub-Saharan Society: Insights From The Nabadam District Of Ghana," Journal of Developmental Entrepreneurship (JDE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 23(03), pages 1-26, September.
    8. Muhammad Shakeel & Li Yaokuang & Ali Gohar, 2020. "Identifying the Entrepreneurial Success Factors and the Performance of Women-Owned Businesses in Pakistan: The Moderating Role of National Culture," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(2), pages 21582440209, May.
    9. Patient Rambe & Takawira Munyaradzi Ndofirepi, 2017. "Gender Differences in the Perceptions of Entrepreneurship Hindrances: A Case of Vocational Education Students in Zimbabwe," Journal of Economics and Behavioral Studies, AMH International, vol. 8(6), pages 94-113.
    10. Lavlu Mozumdar & Geoffrey Hagelaar & Gerben van der Velde & S.W.F. Omta, 2020. "Determinants of the Business Performance of Women Entrepreneurs in the Developing World Context," J, MDPI, vol. 3(2), pages 1-21, May.
    11. de Silva, Tiloka & Tenreyroa, Silvana, 2017. "Population control policies and fertility convergence," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 86158, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    12. Lavlu Mozumdar & Geoffrey Hagelaar & Valentina C. Materia & S. W. F. Omta & Mohammad Amirul Islam & Gerben Velde, 2019. "Embeddedness or Over-Embeddedness? Women Entrepreneurs’ Networks and Their Influence on Business Performance," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 31(5), pages 1449-1469, December.
    13. Shubha Chakravarty & Sarah Haddock & Ioana Botea, 2016. "Providing Out-of-School Adolescent Girls with Skills," World Bank Publications - Reports 24571, The World Bank Group.
    14. Calderone, Margherita & Fiala, Nathan & Melyoki, Lemayon Lemilia & Schoofs, Annekathrin & Steinacher, Rachel, 2022. "Making intense skills training work at scale: Evidence on business and labor market outcomes in Tanzania," Ruhr Economic Papers 950, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    15. Kochar, Anjini & Nagabhushana, Closepet & Sarkar, Ritwik & Shah, Rohan & Singh, Geeta, 2022. "Financial access and women's role in household decisions: Empirical evidence from India's National Rural Livelihoods project," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).
    16. Blount, Ian & Triana, Maria del Carmen & Richard, Orlando & Li, Mingxiang, 2023. "How women CEOs’ financial knowledge and firm homophily affect venture performance," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 155(PA).
    17. Mayra Buvinic & Megan O’Donnell, 2017. "Gender Matters in Economic Empowerment Interventions: A Research Review," Working Papers id:11926, eSocialSciences.
    18. El-Mallakh, Nelly & Maurel, Mathilde & Speciale, Biagio, 2018. "Arab spring protests and women's labor market outcomes: Evidence from the Egyptian revolution," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 656-682.
    19. Lanivich, Stephen E. & Smith, Adam & Levasseur, Ludvig & Pidduck, Robert J. & Busenitz, Lowell & Tang, Jintong, 2022. "Advancing entrepreneurial alertness: Review, synthesis, and future research directions," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 1165-1176.
    20. Kouam, Jean & Asongu, Simplice, 2022. "Effects of Taxation on Social Innovation and Implications for Achieving Sustainable Development Goals in Developing Countries: A Literature Review," MPRA Paper 114061, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:sagope:v:10:y:2020:i:4:p:2158244020963131. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.