Owusu-Kwarteng, Afua and Otuo, Priscilla and Forson, Cynthia and N-Yelkabong, Anthony and Larty, Joanne (2026) Damsels in distress or the queens of change? : Exploring the sustainable development contributions of women entrepreneurs in poverty contexts. Entrepreneurship and Regional Development. ISSN 0898-5626
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
As businesses become crucial to tackling the environmental, social, and economic challenges plaguing the world, there is still a lack of understanding about the specific role of entrepreneurs in poverty contexts to the sustainable development agenda. This paper addresses a central concern for entrepreneurship scholars and sustainable development advocates by revealing how women entrepreneurs are contributing to sustainable development in Ghana through their everyday modest acts of promoting cleanliness, practising coaching and coordination, and collaborating with each other in their marketplaces. Drawing on postcolonial feminist theory and semi-structured interviews with 25 Market Queens, the findings challenge dominant perspectives about women entrepreneurs in poverty contexts being necessity-driven, poor, mediocre, and subordinate individuals who are in desperate need of empowerment and emancipation in line with gender mainstreaming initiatives and Western feminist views. The paper argues that by solely focusing on the economic dimension of their entrepreneurship activities, extant research ignores how women entrepreneurs in poverty contexts are facilitating local adaptation to sustainable development – qualities that become discernible when we are attentive to modest acts and the contexts in which they occur.