Capabilities, human development, and design thinking: a framework for gender-sensitive entrepreneurship programs

Abstract

This paper discusses the ways that capabilities and human development theory can guide the creation of entrepreneurship programs, utilizing a framework of human-centered design thinking. It is well known that a variety of institutional factors shape gender outcomes and gender inequality within entrepreneurship, particularly with regard to necessity versus opportunity entrepreneurship and informal versus formal sector entrepreneurship. Failure to understand the diversity of entrepreneurial activity among women, and the connection (or lack thereof) of such activity to human freedom, leads to biased entrepreneurship programs. This paper links social economic theory and practice by: (1) discussing the ways that capabilities and human development theory relate to entrepreneurship programs; (2) demonstrating that human-centered design thinking reflects the capabilities approach; and (3) showing how the design thinking framework would be used to create a gender-sensitive entrepreneurship program.

Keywords:

• Gender
• entrepreneurship
• human development
• capabilities
• design thinking

Notes

¹ Although they were first introduced in the 1980s, the concepts of opportunity and necessity entrepreneurship were institutionalized in the early 2000s, by the annual surveys of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (Cheung 2014).