Women entrepreneurs in the Gulf States: Taking stock and moving forward

ABSTRACT

The Gulf States have dedicated much attention and many resources to entrepreneurship, particularly in supporting women entrepreneurship. These efforts are reflected in the increase in research focused on women entrepreneurs in the Gulf States. The vast majority of relevant studies have explored the reasons for the low engagement of women in the economic sphere. Recent works have shifted attention to the agency of women entrepreneurs. However, most of the literature has applied Western epistemology without challenging and unpacking the unique contextual dimensions that influence women’s entrepreneurial activities in the Gulf States. This study thus systematically reviews the literature on women entrepreneurship in the Gulf States, increases the understanding of how these women are ‘doing context’ by discussing three different conceptualizations of how they enact and do context in the Gulf States, and proposes future research avenues for developing context-specific epistemologies.

KEYWORDS:

• entrepreneurship
• women
• gender
• Gulf States
• literature review
• Context

Introduction

This study aims to develop a context-specific epistemology of entrepreneurship in the Middle East. The objective is to enhance the knowledge regarding entrepreneurship by exploring the often-misunderstood perspective of the ‘other’ in this region (Bruton et al. 2021; Ozkazanc-Pan 2008; Said 1979, 1993) via a particular emphasis on women’s entrepreneurship (Al-Dajani et al. 2013; Tlaiss 2019). In this pursuit, Welter’s context typology (2011, 2020) has been adopted. This is important not only for advancing the conception of gender and entrepreneurship but also for unearthing the substantive contextual dimensions of the Gulf States more specifically. The conventional, often unchallenged hegemony of Western epistemology has positioned the context of Western developed economies as the norm (Alkhaled 2021) and reinforced the ‘Western political imagination’ of saving ‘Muslim women … from barbaric practices or development projects devoted to empowering them’ (Abu-Lughod 2009, 83). It has also paved the way for a neoliberal narrative that promotes entrepreneurship as a way for women to ‘defy their contextual embeddedness and patriarchal boundaries … to empower themselves and others within their community’ (Alkhaled 2021, 953). While this scholarly research remains valuable and essential, such works have neglected the opportunity to learn from ‘the East’ (Connell 2014) and better understand the everydayness of entrepreneurship (Welter et al. 2017) by bringing attention to substantive contextual dimensions (Johns 2006; Welter 2011) and, more importantly, the agency of women entrepreneurs in enacting their context (Welter 2020). One such context comprises the Gulf States (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)), not only because the region has been an understudied research setting but also due to its unique contextual specificities (Martínez-García, Basco, and Gómez-Ansón 2021).

First, unlike most of the Middle East and North African (MENA) region, these monarchies have enjoyed some political stability and access to natural resources such as oil and gas, which have contributed to the modernization of infrastructure and facilitated free access to health care and education for their citizens (Ennis 2013; Zahlan 2016). Access to natural resources has also resulted in a unique social contract and market arrangement whereby the government offers generous national subsidiaries, free access to public services, and comfortable, well-remunerated jobs in the public sector (Eide and Rösler 2014). This social contract has been put to the test amid the continuing decline and fluctuation of the oil market, a growing population where more than half are younger than 25, high unemployment, and the Arab Spring in 2011. Second, unlike the Western context where entrepreneurship has been historically, economically and culturally associated with white males (Ahl 2006; Bruni, Gherardi, and Poggio 2004; Jennings and Brush 2013), entrepreneurship in this context is a rather new phenomenon (Hashim 2021). The Gulf States have adopted entrepreneurship as one of the key pillars in their strategic Vision 2030 as a way to diversify their economy, increase youth employment, with a particular focus on women’s active participation in the economy, and shift the responsibility from the state to the individual (Ennis 2013, 2019a, 2019b). Third, despite these economic shifts, throughout the region’s historical trajectory, involving both the British Empire (Ahmad 2013) and American influence (Martínez-García, Basco, and Gómez-Ansón 2021), the importance of family has remained at the core of society (Alrubaishi, McAdam, and Harrison 2021; Barakat 1993). The family patriarch has the highest authority and responsibility in the family (Abdal Ati 1982). This patriarchal system still has an influence on the socialization, behaviour, and actions of individuals in general and women more specifically, both in private and public spheres. While these points emphasize the commonalities among the GCC countries, these nations have certain differences. For instance, although they are all monarchies, Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar have a constitutional monarchy, Saudi Arabia and Oman are absolute monarchies, and the United Arab Emirates is ruled by a federal monarchy. However, the understanding of how these different institutional settings influence women’s entrepreneurial activity and its potential implications for women’s agency is lacking. The land areas also vary; the smallest country, Bahrain, has a land area of 778 km₂, and the largest country has a land area of 2.15 million km₂. Putting this into perspective, Saudi Arabia’s land area is the equivalent of seven land areas of Italy, almost 5 of Sweden and 4 of France. The increasing focus on entrepreneurial ecosystems has also placed specific attention on the agency of entrepreneurs in influencing their geographical contexts (Baker and Welter 2020; Stam and Welter 2020). For example, the vast land area of Saudi Arabia is home to different Bedouin tribes that live in parallel with a sedentary society. Accounting for these differences in social origin, the relevant ‘historical differences’ on a regional level and ‘cultural attitudes toward entrepreneurship’ (Stam and Welter 2020, 16) can provide novel insights into the impact and influence thereof on women entrepreneurs and their agency.

Furthermore, while the majority of the people in this region are Muslims, there are differences between and within the Sunni and Shia schools. These are clearly reflected in how a small country such as Bahrain has specific courts (Sunni and Jaffari Court) to regulate family issues. While Bahrain has been actively providing Bahraini nationality to people of different origins, in Kuwait, there is a rather large community of families born in Kuwait across different generations without any citizenship, known as ‘bedon’. This bedon status blocks this group of people from enjoying the wealth and benefits of Kuwaiti nationals. These substantive contextual dimensions reflect some interesting tensions that call for scholarly attention. For instance, how does the legal (bedon vs. Kuwaiti citizen) or religious (Muslims vs. non-Muslims) status of women in any of these countries influence the resources available to them? How does this impact women’s agency and capacity to be an entrepreneur?

Against this backdrop, it is imperative to synthesize the literature on women entrepreneurs in the Gulf States to develop a better understanding of the uniqueness of this context and how it has the potential to facilitate new knowledge in the field of entrepreneurship. Thus, with the aim of developing a context-specific epistemology of the Gulf States in the Middle East, this paper (1) systematically reviews studies on women entrepreneurship in the Gulf States, (2) identifies key themes within these substantive contextual dimensions in relation to women’s entrepreneurial activity, and (3) offers directions for future research. These objectives are important for different reasons. First, while scholars have explored entrepreneurship in different transitioning economies (Aidis et al. 2007; Batjargal 2006; Bliss and Garratt 2001; Sutter et al. 2017; Welter, Smallbone, and Pobol 2015), they have overlooked economic transition in rentier states (Ennis 2013). Rentier economies have fostered unique social contracts and market arrangements (Ennis 2013). For example, the assumption that entrepreneurship is a potential avenue for curing the illness of unemployment may be questionable in this context due to its reliance on foreign recruits for low- and high-skilled positions. Second, the assumption that developing and emerging contexts are the opposite of ‘WEIRD societies’ does not necessarily hold in this context, where the level of education is generally quite high and even higher among women (Faisal, Jabeen, and Katsioloudes 2017; Jabeen, Das, and Katsioloudes 2015). These nations are also often rich. However, most Gulf States have bypassed the phase of industrialization and shifted toward a knowledge economy (Ennis 2013). Thus, intersectionality and class theories that stem from industrialized societies may play out differently in this context and may be contradictory. For instance, a successful woman entrepreneur who is a ‘bedon’ in Kuwait may face an objection from the family of a man who has Kuwaiti nationality, or this ‘bedon’ woman may not have access to the same resources as recognized citizens. Furthermore, in some of the Gulf States, the law does not grant the children of local women citizenship if their father is not a Gulf State national. Another dimension concerns the ‘elite’ and ‘marginalized’ tribes (family names) within a country and their potential access to resources, networks, and role models. Thus, intersectionality helps reveal how being anchored in multiple markers of identity (race, class, citizenship, etc.) within this context may determine the privilege or discrimination that individuals encounter and their agency. Third, while the emergence of the rentier state has reinforced the logic of the family man as breadwinner and contributed to maintaining traditional gender roles, the strong promotion of women entrepreneurship by governments (Ennis 2019a) seems to contradict traditional gender roles, which are reinforced by both the unique marriage contract and family structure that are in turn reinforced by family law. Accordingly, it is timely and essential to understand the nuances of women entrepreneurs in the context of the Gulf States, especially since the region is undergoing changes at an exponential rate to meet Vision 2030, something that can contribute a new, alternative reality to the ongoing debates in the field and, more importantly, capture the agency of women entrepreneurs during these volatile and transition times.

Hence, this paper is structured as follows: First, it identifies peer-reviewed papers in English that address women entrepreneurship in the Gulf States following queries of both Elsevier’s Scopus (Banerjee, Nordqvist, and Hellerstedt 2020; Foss and Saebi 2017) and Thomson Reuter’s Web of Science, first in December 2017 and again in April 2021. Second, a comprehensive list of the selected papers is compiled in a table. Third, using thematic analysis, the topics, findings and conclusions of the reviewed studies are organized; Welter’s (2011) typology of context is used to distinguish ‘who’, ‘where’ (business, social, spatial and institutional), ‘when’ (historical and temporal) and ‘doing context’ (Welter 2020). The paper then discusses some future research avenues.

Thematic analysis of studies on women entrepreneurship in the context of the Gulf States suggests that the early studies mainly focused on the deficiency model, with specific attention given to challenges that prevent and hinder women’s active engagement in the economy, despite efforts to promote and facilitate their entrepreneurship. More recent studies have shifted the focus to the agency of women entrepreneurs in this context. This could be a response to the continued domination of the Orientalist view that has governed most of the Western representations of Muslims and Arab women (Said 1979,). While this shift is laudable and necessary to give women in the ‘ghetto’ a voice (Baker and Welter 2017), a better understanding of the extant microcultural processes and how they influence women’s everyday entrepreneurship is needed.

This literature review thus offers three main contributions to the literature. First, it responds to calls for more inclusive and diverse knowledge production (Connell 2017; Dinh and Calabrò 2019; Van De Ven 2011) by offering a comprehensive and structured account of the state of (women) entrepreneurship in the Gulf States. Second, it outlines the contextual typologies suggested by Welter (2011) and how women entrepreneurs do context (Welter 2020) by structuring the key themes identified accordingly. The literature review also identifies overlooked overarching themes for use in future research. Addressing this lacuna therefore answers calls to ‘refuse the othering’ within the literature on women entrepreneurship (Welter 2020, 33). Notably, while I critique and stress the need to move beyond Western epistemology, I am not discrediting either its use or its value. On the contrary, I think its theories and concepts are rich and profound. However, applying them in a different context requires a deeper understanding of the substantive context, something that has been largely ignored. Thus, this paper aims to unpack some of these ‘historical, temporal, institutional, spatial and social contexts’ to enable researchers to better adapt research, challenge findings and provide new and novel insights for existing theories while developing new conceptualizations. Fulfilling this aim, then, will not only advance the knowledge regarding the Gulf States but also enable scholars to learn from them. Third, this aim extends the notion of doing context by offering three different conceptualizations of how women entrepreneurs enact and do context.

In the following section, I discuss the focal methods before reviewing the literature as well as salient research on ‘doing context’. Drawing on this detailed analysis, I then provide certain directions for future research.

Methods

Regarding the parameters of this study, consistent with studies on women entrepreneurship (De Vita, Mari, and Poggesi 2014; Poggesi, Mari, and De Vita 2016), the focus is on reviewing peer-reviewed papers published in English, excluding books, edited volumes, book chapters or conference proceedings; that is, articles published in journals can be considered validated knowledge, with a higher impact on the field (Deng 2012). Two electronic databases were used: Elsevier’s Scopus (Banerjee, Nordqvist, and Hellerstedt 2020; Foss and Saebi 2017), the largest database with abstracts and citations of peer-reviewed articles (Campopiano et al. 2017), and Thomson Reuter’s Web of Science, which was used as an additional check (Fitz-Koch et al. 2018). Similar to Henry, Foss, and Ahl (2016), the search keywords (gender or female or women or woman) and (entrepreneurship or entrepreneur or enterprise or business or firm) were used with the addition of the following keywords: Gulf State* or Bahrain or Saudi Arabia or Qatar or Kuwait or Oman or United Arab Emirates or GCC. The initial search was performed in December 2017 and resulted in 155 articles. The second search was conducted in April 2021 and resulted in 463 papers. As such, the cut-off date for the papers in this review was any publication from before the search date in April 2021. The inclusion criteria included any English peer-reviewed articles that focused on GCC women entrepreneurs. To provide a comprehensive review, I disregarded journal ranking (Dinh and Calabrò 2019). Moreover, the abstracts of these papers were read carefully to ensure that the focal articles dealt with aspects of women entrepreneurship among Gulf State nationals. Papers that addressed leadership in corporations, human resources, women (locals or expatriates) in employment, non-Gulf State women entrepreneurs, teams, marketing, or consumer behaviour were excluded. Duplicate papers were removed during the second search. This systematic and rigorous review of the queried articles identified 52 papers, which were read carefully. Table 1 presents a list of the full sample of articles included in this review.

Table

Empirical Setting	Title	Author, Year, Journal	ABS	Methods	Theory/Concept	Key Findings
Kuwait	Capabilities and (Missed) Opportunity for Women’s Entrepreneurship in Kuwait	Langworthy and Warnecke (2020), Journal of Economic Issues	2	N/A	Capabilities	Kuwaiti women have the capabilities needed to become entrepreneurs, yet few women engage in entrepreneurial activity.
Bahrain	The evolution of female entrepreneurship in the Gulf Cooperation Council, the case of Bahrain	Alexandre and Kharabsheh (2019), International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship	2	Qualitative: Interview (12)	Institutional Theory	Women entrepreneurs are mainly pulled into entrepreneurship. Male family members with established successful business are used as role models. Challenges are related to the lack of knowledge on how to establish an online business.
Bahrain	‘The royal award goes to … ’ legitimacy processes for female-led family ventures	Hashim, Naldi, and Markowska (2020), Journal of Family Business Strategy	2	Qualitative: Life-story, social media and media archives	Legitimacy-as-perception	Offering a model of how women entrepreneurs establishing a family business can gain influence and legitimacy from evaluators on various levels. Meritocracy is key. The legitimacy process is reciprocal in nature. Royal validity and legitimacy processes can change family norms.
Cross Comparative	The Gendered Complexities of Promoting Female Entrepreneurship in the Gulf	Ennis (2019a), New Political Economy	3	Qualitative: (40) Entrepreneurship initiative directors & academics, (30) interviews (5) focus groups with female entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs	Structural logic of the economy, logic of development narratives & logic of socioeconomic organization	Women entrepreneurs operating in a Gulf State have to deal with competing logics that push them to become actively engaged in the market and confront social forces that pull women toward the domestic domain sphere. These forces can be imposed by both men and women.
Cross Comparative	Business education and entrepreneurial skills: Evidence from Arab universities	Badawi et al. (2019), Journal of Education for Business	Not in ABS	Quantitative: Questionnaire (668/768) students	Entrepreneurial skills in business education	Found a strong effect of education on entrepreneurial attitudes.
Cross Comparative	The impact of gender and culture on networking and venture creation	Kalafatoglu and Mendoza (2017), Cross Cultural & Strategic Management	2	Qualitative: Interviews	Women entrepreneurship Culture, Networking	Women entrepreneurs are restricted by norms and culture that enforce patriarchal systems. Networking is key for women to overcome the challenges of limited access to capital, resources, information about finance and new potential business opportunities.
Cross Comparative	Entrepreneurial motives and their antecedents of men and women in North Africa and the Middle East	Bastian and Zali (2016), Gender in Management: An International Journal	1	Quantitative: Survey (1551)	N/A	Educational attainment has stronger effects on men than on women. Liberal and postmodern values have a significant effect on men in terms of entrepreneurial behaviour.
Cross Comparative	Networks around entrepreneurs: gendering in China and countries around the Persian Gulf	Bertelsen et al. (2017), Gender in Management: An International Journal	1	Quantitative: GEM project 16,365 entrepreneurs from 6 countries	Gendering of Networks, Networks and culture	Women have slightly larger networks in the private sphere than men.
Cross Comparative	Strategic interventions to improve women entrepreneurship in GCC countries	Faisal, Jabeen, and Katsioloudes (2017), Journal of Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies	1	N/A	N/A	Women experience different challenges.
Cross Comparative	How Islamic Business Ethics Impact Women Entrepreneurs: Insights from Four Arab Middle Eastern Countries	Tlaiss (2015), Journal Business Ethics	3	Qualitative: Interviews (30)	Institutional Theory	Muslim women entrepreneurs reflect agency by reinterpreting Islamic business ethics. This helps them legitimize their businesses and challenge the conservative interpretation of Islam. In addition, using the Prophet’s wife Khadija as a role model, women entrepreneurs refer to the Prophet himself (p) as a role model. Islamic work-related business ethics seem to have a positive effect on women entrepreneurs. These findings challenge mainstream studies that suggest the religion of Islam hinders women’s success in entrepreneurial activity.
Cross Comparative	Women business owners in the Middle East and North Africa: a five–country research study	Weeks (2009), International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship	2	N/A	N/A	Women entrepreneurs operate across different business sectors. Most of them have professional working experience. Many women trade internationally and are growth oriented.
Cross Comparative	‘And now I’m free’: Women’s empowerment and emancipation through entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia and Sweden	Alkhaled and Berglund (2018), Entrepreneurship & Regional Development	3	Qualitative: Life–story	Emancipation and empowerment in women’s entrepreneurship	Participants express their ambition to break free from a subordinating patriarchal order through empowerment within the system and social change. The study suggests that women can overcome subordination via individual empowerment through entrepreneurship or actions within the set system. The study argues that emancipation is distinct from empowerment and can be achieved by encouraging other women to engage in entrepreneurship as a means of collectively changing the social structure.
Cross Comparative	Women entrepreneurship in Middle East: Understanding barriers and use of ICT for entrepreneurship development	Mathew (2010), International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal	1	N/A	N/A	The author claims that ICT can help women overcome different contextual challenges.
KSA	Entrepreneurial ecosystem, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, and entrepreneurial intention in higher education: Evidence from Saudi Arabia	Elnadi and Gheith (2021), International Journal of Management Education	1	Quantitative: Questionnaire (259) undergraduate business students in a public university	Entrepreneurial intention/Entrepreneurial self-efficacy/Entrepreneurial ecosystem	The study finds a positive link between students’ perceptions of the entrepreneurial ecosystem with entrepreneurial intentions. Government support and incentives stimulate students’ entrepreneurial intentions and enhance their self-efficacy. Thus, self-efficacy is not fully intrinsic but can be influenced and shaped by enhancing students’ perceptions of the ecosystem.
KSA	‘To boldly go where no [man] has gone before’-Institutional voids and the development of women’s digital entrepreneurship	McAdam, Crowley, and Harrison (2019), Technological Forecasting and Social Change	3	Qualitative: Case study (6)	Institutional Void/Digital Entrepreneurship	The study suggests that women entrepreneurs use digital technologies to overcome certain contextual voids. Using digital technologies enables them to push institutions to alter certain practices and increases their legitimacy as entrepreneurs. It provides women with the possibility of emancipation from gender stereotypes and weakens the institutional framework. These women are also acting as role models and mentors for other potential female entrepreneurs. Such entrepreneurial actions can lead to changes in formal institutions as well as sociocultural norms.
KSA	Digital girl: cyberfeminism and the emancipatory potential of digital entrepreneurship in emerging economies	McAdam, Crowley, and Harrison (2020), Small Business Economics	3	Qualitative: Interview (6)	Digital Entrepreneurship, Cyberfeminism & Entrepreneurship as Emancipation	This study suggests that women entrepreneurs draw on technology to turn contextual restrictions into business opportunities. The results indicate that the online environment in this context is not used to ‘escape embodiment’ but to alter lived realities by using the ‘safe space’ offered by digital technologies and challenge social and cultural norms.
KSA	Doing business with impudence: A focus on women entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia	Sadi and Al-Ghazali (2010), Global Journal of Business Management	Not in ABS	Quantitative: Survey (350)	N/A	Self-fulfilment, independence, and profit motives are key motivational factors for women entrepreneurs. Traditional restrictions seem to be the greatest challenge women face. Men however, claim that the greatest challenge for women entrepreneurs is the lack of market studies. Weak formal institutions supporting entrepreneurial activity are also problematic for many women.
KSA	Women’s entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia: Feminist solidarity and political activism in disguise?	Alkhaled (2021), Gender, Work & Organization	3	Qualitative: Longitudinal 10 yrs, (16)	Postcolonial feminism/Quiet encroachment/Social nonmovement	Entrepreneurship provides women with a space for feminist solidarity and a legitimate platform to engaging in political change. Women adopt a three‐step approach for move from a single entrepreneurial activity to political activism through entrepreneurship.
KSA	Entrepreneurial motivations among females university youth in Saudi Arabia	Almobaireek and Manolova (2013), Journal of Business Economics and Management	2	Quantitative: Students (856)	Motivation	Both men and women place high importance on the ability to achieve financial success, show creativity, and gain business experience. Notable differences are that women are less likely to start a new venture for achievement, control, or to realize a vision. Instead, women emphasized more independence through venture startup. Female university students were more likely than male students to start an entrepreneurial venture out of necessity, whereas men were more likely to have financial success as their motivation.
KSA	Saudi female innovators as entrepreneurs – theoretical underpinnings	Kemppainen (2019), International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship	2	Secondary data: Previous literature	Entrepreneurial Innovation	The history of female participation in the economy is short and the work environment continues to be largely segregated.
KSA	Saudi women entrepreneurs: A growing economic segment	Welsh et al. (2014), Journal of Business Research	3	Quantitative: Questionnaire (235), respondents = 70%	5 Ms	The findings reveal that women are the principal in the majority (55%) of women-owned businesses. A total of 70% of the focal women own more than 51% of their business and 42% started the business by themselves. Saudi Arabian businesswomen are highly educated, receive strong support from family and friends, and rate themselves as excellent in terms of people skills and innovation.
KSA	Female entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia: Opportunities and challenges	Danish and Smith (2012), International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship	2	Quantitative: Survey (33 out 40)	5 Ms	The proportion of female entrepreneurs who own a business is higher than at any time in the past and this trend is growing. This is despite significant challenges. Family seems to be a positive rather than a negative factor. The motivation to establish a business is largely not that of supplementing household income, important for only one third of respondents.
KSA	Businesswomen in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: characteristic, growth patterns and progression in a regional context	Zamberi Ahmad (2011), Equality, diversity and inclusion: An international journal	2	Face-to-face survey: (314)	N/A	Saudi female entrepreneurs are generally confident, educated, optimistic about the future and resourceful. However, they face obstacles, and have an average 11 years of business experience. Main challenges include the regulatory environment, limited access to and use of formal capital and financing mechanisms, the need for increased integration of sophisticated marketing and technology tools into business operations and for a greater availability of support services. The service sector is one of the most typical businesses with sole female ownership.
KSA	Evidence of the characteristics of women entrepreneurs in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: An empirical investigation	Ahmad (2011b), International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship	2	Qualitative: Interview (19)	N/A	Women-owned and operated businesses are embedded in both the family and social relations to a greater extent than the literature on women’s entrepreneurship has recognized to date. They engage in service sector businesses with little startup capital. Their motivation for entrepreneurship are mostly pull factors such as flexible working time, the desire for independence and to contribute to society, exploit great market opportunities and providing jobs.
Oman	Barriers to rural women entrepreneurs in Oman	Ghouse et al. (2017), International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research	2	Mixed-methods: Questionnaire (57), Interviews (10)	N/A	The social norms prevalent in Omani rural society mean that women tend to start their enterprises once they are married and generally lack a graduate education. They have limited or no exposure to entrepreneurial or basic business practices and find their way more through experience and trial and error. The study claims that it is important to understand the focal social context, especially the interclan/intertribal culture, since it is the community and religious leaders that facilitate important resources for rural women.
Oman	Entrepreneurial success of cottage-based women entrepreneurs in Oman	Ghouse, McElwee, and Durrah (2019), International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research	2	Mixed-methods: Questionnaire (142), Interview (6)	N/A	Key success factors for women entrepreneurs include their technical skills, use of social media and understanding of markets. Necessary entrepreneurial skills coupled with an ability to challenge social norms that tend to traditionally restrict opportunities for women appear to be important for entrepreneurial success. Women use their own savings and funding from family and friends for their businesses.
Oman	Characteristics, Motivations, and Challenges of Women Entrepreneurs in Oman’s Al-Dhahira Region	Belwal, Belwal, and Al Saidi (2014), Journal of the Middle East Women’s Studies	Not in ABS	Quantitative: Survey	N/A	The needs of balancing work and family life and having a market niche are some key motivation factors. Key challenges are insufficient financial resources and lack of access to external financing
Oman	Students’ perception of entrepreneurship and enterprise education in Oman	Belwal et al. (2015), Education and Training	1	Quantitative: Questionnaire (200), students	Theory of planned behaviour	The majority of students are interested in entrepreneurial activity but do not have the knowledge needed to run a business.
Oman	Women entrepreneurs in Oman: some barriers to success	McElwee and Al-Riyami (2003), Career Development International	2	Qualitative: Interviews (25)	N/A	Identifies economic and sociopolitical challenges that women entrepreneurs face in Oman.
UAE	Is family the key? Exploring the motivation and success factors of female Emirati entrepreneurs	Jabeen, Das, and Katsioloudes (2015),International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business	2	Quantitative: Open-ended questionnaire (244/300)	N/A	Personal goals are the main motivating factors; prioritizing freedom, self-satisfaction, growth and economic necessity (income) are also key factors. The desire for a higher income is not a key motivating factor for women aspiring to become entrepreneurs. Their businesses are funded through personal savings and financial support from family and friends. The family support and the employment of family members were significant contributors to business success.
UAE	Entrepreneurial Intention and UAE Youth: Unique Influencers of Entrepreneurial Intentions in an Emerging Country Context	Al Saiqal et al. (2019), Journal of East-West Business	1	Quantitative: Questionnaire (544) university students	Theory of Planned Behavior, Entrepreneurial Intentions	Identifies the direct influence of attitude and perceived behavioural control and the indirect influence of subjective norms on entrepreneurship intention. This study highlights potential importance of family and social groups in promoting entrepreneurial intentions in this emerging national context.
UAE	Preliminary investigation of Emirati women entrepreneurs in the UAE	Erogul and McCrohan (2008), African Journal of Business Management	Not in ABS	Mixed-methods: Questionnaire and interviews (17)	N/A	The primary motivating factor driving Emirati women to start their own business is a desire to gain control over both their working and personal lives. Women who receive support from their male family members are less inhibited in starting their own business. Women entrepreneurs consider their families important support providers; however, conflicts often occurr between work and family due to time constraints. The participants suggest that the lack of support from male family members could be a significant challenge preventing female Emiratis from starting their own business.
UAE	Entrepreneurial activity and attitude in the United Arab Emirates	Erogul (2014), Innovation: Management, policy & practice	Not in ABS	GEM data	N/A	Government policy may influence entrepreneurial activity and attitude; entrepreneurial readiness can be established through schools and public universities.
UAE	Contextualizing Arab female entrepreneurship in the United Arab Emirates	Erogul, Rod, and Barragan (2019), Culture and Organization	2	Qualitative: Interview (11)	Gender, identity & networking	Cooperation with men is a viable and complementary means of addressing contextual challenges and achieving empowerment. Women entrepreneurs’ multilayered identity work manifests in a relational manner via efforts to strategically construct opportunity by means of engaging in discursive negotiation with men. Such discursive negotiation and networking are necessary to obtain cooperation and aid from men to navigate cultural stereotypes and practices and conduct business.
UAE	Female entrepreneurship in the United Arab Emirates: Legislative encouragements and cultural constraints	Goby & Erogul (2011), Women’s Studies International Forum	Not in ABS	N/A	N/A	The findings concern the following: (1) the legislative attempts to enhance female entrepreneurial achievement; (2) the sociocultural realities constraining women in business ventures; (3) the impact of the UAE’s strongly collectivist culture on business networking among women; and (4) UAE women’s motivation for entrepreneurial endeavours given the abundant options for more secure employment.
UAE	Is family the key? Exploring the motivation and success factors of female Emirati entrepreneurs.	Jabeen, Das, and Katsioloudes (2015), International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business	2	Qualitative: Questionnaire (224), response rate = 75%	N/A	Family is one important, but not the main motivating factor. Family support and the contribution of family members to the business are important for business success.
UAE	Entrepreneurial mindset and the role of universities as strategic drivers of entrepreneurship	Jabeen, Faisal, and Katsioloudes (2017), Gender in Management: An International Journal	1	Quantitative: Questionnaire (224), response rate = 75%	N/A	Most of the women entrepreneurs in certain business stages feel that their enterprise growth is stagnant as they lack the skills needed to manage and expand their business. women receive positive familial support for education and venture start ups. Regardless of the various forms of government support, women entrepreneurs that believed much more needs to be done to strengthen and support women entrepreneurship in the country. Most of them stress the importance of professional staff, financial schemes, training and education for further development and growth, which are vital to business success.
UAE	Determinants of innovation decisions among Emirati female-owned small and medium enterprises	Jabeen et al. (2019), International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship	2	Quantitative: Questionnaire (50/75)	N/A	women SME owners prioritize government policies, research and development, innovation strategy and skill development as the main criteria that influence their innovation decisions. Family support, access to external financing, social networks and the allocation of funds are the main subcriteria affecting their decisions to be innovative. Furthermore, respondents who are in the nascent business stage consider family motivation the greatest influence on initiating new ideas through financial and moral support.
UAE	Measuring Students Entrepreneurial Intentions: The Study of Al Dhafra Region, Abu Dhabi, UAE	Mohammed (2019), International Journal of Entrepreneurship	1	Quantitative: Survey (53 out 100), graduating students	Entrepreneurial intentions	Perceived support from formal institution, educational institutions and family members influence students’ entrepreneurial intentions.
UAE	Effects of context on the entrepreneurial intent of female students from the United Arab Emirates	Vracheva, Abu-Rahma, and Jacques (2019), Education and Training	1	Quantitative: Survey (151/175) female students	Theory of Planned Behavior, Entrepreneurial Intentions, Gender, Family	Family norms positively influence women students’ entrepreneurial intentions, but whether their family had owned or currently runs a business does not. The university environment does not contribute in a significant way to female students’ levels of EI. The findings on influences of the family suggest that the family plays a role but that the mechanisms by which it influences EI among women students do not involve role models (e.g. the personal example of running a business) but instill certain values and beliefs concerning entrepreneurship (e.g. via social norms). Unless their father supports an entrepreneurial career, whether the family has owned businesses in the past or is running businesses in the present might not automatically translate into entrepreneurial opportunities for a young women.
UAE	‘Strategic (dis)obedience’: Female entrepreneurs reflecting on and acting upon patriarchal practices	Barragan, Erogul, and Essers (2018), Gender, Work & Organization	3	Qualitative: Life-story interviews (22)	Women’s entrepreneurial agency and identities in patriarchal – Islamic societies. Microemancipation, dominators (i.e. men of the patriarchal family) and the dominated (i.e. women entrepreneurs).	Women entrepreneurs face the dilemma of disobeying or obeying the boundaries established by the men in their family. While they seem to direct their micro-emancipatory acts toward ‘ends’ and ‘means’, they spend most of their efforts in ‘social relations’, which entail an ongoing process of ‘explaining’, ‘persuading’ and ‘convincing’ the men in the family. This process involves persistence and patience. Moreover, disobedience is rarely presented as openly confrontational to family members, referred to as ‘strategic obedience’ acts, because it involves the possibility of micro-emancipatory acts. This strategic obedience involves a dialectic process of reflexivity and agency.
UAE	Social capital impediments in the united Arab emirates: a case of Emirati Female entrepreneurs	Erogul (2011), Journal of Enterprising Culture	1	Qualitative: Interview (17)		Women entrepreneurs who engage with men in business require a ‘male contact facilitator’ from their family or relatives to do so. These men are facilitated by the entrepreneur to adopt the role of a ‘male network Partner’ (MNP) to provide support in overcoming challenges and achieving business objectives.
UAE	United Arab Emirates female entrepreneurs: motivations and frustrations	Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki (2011), Equality Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal	1	Qualitative: Interview (16)		The vast majority of these women obtain their startup capital via personal savings. The results suggest that this reflects the wealthy nature of UAE nationals who have enough capital from savings to commence their own businesses. Sole proprietorship is the legal form of most of the enterprises, with a significant share among family shareholders. Most of the respondents report a lack of financial and managerial know–how and industry knowledge to be possible hindrances for business growth.
UAE	Students’ attitude towards entrepreneurship: does gender matter in the UAE?	Majumdar and Varadarajan (2013), Foresight	1	Quantitative: Survey (244), students		The results of this empirical research suggest that no gender differences exist among the factors that shape entrepreneurial intentions, particularly among business students. Both male and female students in the UAE show high and equal intentions to become entrepreneurs. This is possible due to the efforts of the UAE Government toward gender equality and the elimination of discrimination against women in all socioeconomic spheres of life.
UAE	Female entrepreneurship in the UAE: a multilevel integrative lens	Naguib and Jamali (2015), Gender in Management: An International Journal	1	Qualitative: Focus group (15)	Institutional Theory	This study documents the positive changes favoring women entrepreneurship and reveals the persistence of various traces the stereotypes and patriarchy that continue to constrain the free expression of women entrepreneurs in the UAE. The expressed motives reveal the coexistence of push factors (e.g. financial security, lack of job opportunities, low income) and pull factors (e.g. self-esteem, social status recognition, self-actualization, independence and nationalism). Notably, the group of expatriate women refers mainly to the former factors, while the local participants point to the latter. All agree that contributions to family income are a shared responsibility of men and women. However, there is a notable difference between Emirati males and expatriates’ perspectives. While for Emirati men, the work of women is a choice and a way to keep them busy and use their free time productively, for the expatriates, it is more a necessity and a way to help the husband financially.
UAE	Factors that affect women entrepreneurs: evidence from an emerging economy	Naser et al. (2009), International Journal of Organizational Analysis	1	Quantitative: Questionnaire (449/750)	N/A	Financial support from the government, especially start-up capital, is an important factor that motivates women to establish their own businesses. Self-fulfilment, knowledge, skills and experience, including the relationship to the spouse’s/father’s business, are all important factors in the development of women entrepreneurs. Unlike previous research factors social norms, market networks, and competition do not seem to be barriers for women in becoming entrepreneurs.
UAE	Relevance of education for potential entrepreneurs: an international investigation	Sowmya, Majumdar, and Gallant (2010), Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development	2	Quantitative: Survey (510/860)	Entrepreneurial Intentions	The results indicated that the majority of students possessed entrepreneurial attitudes. Furthermore, both students’ characteristics and entrepreneurial experience were found to be associated with certain entrepreneurial attitudes. The results showed that young female students in Dubai are positive regarding the role that universities can play in fostering their interest in entrepreneurship and their education and can serve as the incubators for their new venture.
UAE	How Islamic Business Ethics Impact Women Entrepreneurs: Insights from Four Arab Middle Eastern Countries	Tlaiss (2015), International Small Business Journal	3	Qualitative: Interview (20)	Postmaterialism, legitimation/social approval & dissatisfaction	Women’s entrepreneurial motives are embedded in prevailing societal norms that stress their caregiver roles and the legal and religious responsibilities of their male family members. Women entrepreneurs do not challenge the macroinstitutions of government, family or cultural expectation. On the contrary, they are responsive to encouraging governmental initiatives and cultural expectations, as these allow them to better serve their families and their capacities as wives and mothers, and themselves as career women. These women are motivated by the need for autonomy, independence, and freedom. They frame their entrepreneurial motives around Islamic teachings, which are used to justify their nonmaterial motives. This courage to pursue the need for independence in a traditional, Islamic society highlights Emirati agency and is different from findings in studies concerning Islamic values.
UAE	Gender differences in entrepreneurial attitudes and intentions: the case of Brand Dubai	Ahmed, Amponsah, and Johnson (2019), International Journal Business and Emerging Markets	1	Quantitative: (476/550)	Entrepreneurial attitudes and intentions	This study finds no gender-specific or significant differences between men and women in their entrepreneurial attitudes and intentions.
UAE	Prioritizing the factors promoting innovation in Emirati female-owned SMEs: AHP approach	Al Matroushi et al, (2018) International Journal Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management	1	Quantitative: Survey (30)	N/A	Respondents agree that innovation strategy and innovation culture play a role in SME success.
UAE	Students’ entrepreneurial readiness in the United Arab Emirates: an empirical inquiry of related factors	Tipu, Zeffane, and Ryan (2011), International Journal of Business and Globalisation	Not in ABS	Quantitative: Survey (305) Students	N/A	Entrepreneurial readiness is strongly linked with students low academic performance, parents’ employment status and gender.
UAE	Context, gender and entrepreneurial intentions: How entrepreneurship education changes the equation	Van Ewijk and Belghiti-Mahut (2019), International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship	2	Quantitative: Survey (246) Students	Entrepreneurial intentions	The results indicate a negative effect of gender stereotypes on female students entrepreneurial intentions in the beginning of entrepreneurship courses. However, no gender difference is noted when the entrepreneurship course concludes. The authors claim that women students are more likely to experience positive changes in EI than men students.

Analysis

Three main observations can be drawn from Table 1. The first observation is in relation to national context: more than 42% of the studies focused on Emirati women entrepreneurs, approximately 21% focused on Saudi women entrepreneurs, and another 21% conducted a comparative study of other countries belonging to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and/or other countries such as Sweden, China or Turkey. Approximately 9% focused on Omani women entrepreneurs. Less than 4% of the studies focused on Bahrain, and less than 2% focused on Kuwait. Second, since 2013, there have been more papers published in ABS (3) journals such as Gender, Work & Organizations, the Journal of Business Research, Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, and the Journal of Business Ethics, which signals an improvement in both research quality and rigour. Third, there seems to have been a shift from survey-based research with either students or a low number of research participants to a more qualitative approach involving women entrepreneurs.

In the next step, similar to other reviews attempting to systematically assess and synthesize the literature, I used thematic analysis (Ahl 2003; Henry, Foss, and Ahl 2016; Poggesi, Mari, and De Vita 2016). The papers were thus classified based on the main contextual dimensions suggested by Welter (2011, 2020). The key identified themes were organized and discussed under each respective contextual dimension. These findings are discussed in the following section.

Review of the literature

The review classified, organized and structured the key identified themes in relation to the substantive contextual dimension: ‘who’, ‘where’, ‘when’ and ‘doing context’ (Welter 2011, 2020). Here, I start by discussing the themes identified in relation to the contextual dimension ‘who’.

The “who”

The ‘who’ contextual dimension outlines ‘who enters entrepreneurship and which ventures are created’ (Welter 2011, 167). The review identified three main themes in the literature: (1) the characteristics of women entrepreneurs, (2) their entrepreneurial motivations, and (3) the characteristics of women entrepreneurs’ businesses.

The characteristics of women who enter entrepreneurship

The first key theme identified in the literature concerns the characteristics of women entrepreneurs. The reviewed studies suggest that entrepreneurship in general has not been a career path for local citizens (Erogul 2014) or, more specifically, for women, as entrepreneurship in this context is regarded as a new phenomenon (Belwal, Belwal, and Al Saidi 2014; Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki 2011; Tlaiss and Tlaiss 2015). For both men and women, the traditional career path has been employment in the public sector, characterized by high remuneration and low productivity (Ennis 2019a; Erogul 2014; Faisal, Jabeen, and Katsioloudes 2017). Studies indicate that there have been continuous changes in the regulations and laws to support women entering the public sphere. The aim of these changes is to encourage more women to be active in the national economy. They include increasing the literacy rate among women, making legal changes to overcome laws that restrict women, reducing women’s dependence on male guardians, introducing different initiatives to attract young generations and women to embark on entrepreneurship as an alternative career choice, and offering funding while establishing incubation centres that support innovation (Ahmad 2011a, 2011b; Almobaireek and Manolova 2013; Barragan, Erogul, and Essers 2018; Danish and Smith 2012; Erogul 2011; Goby & Erogul 2011; Jabeen et al. 2019; Jabeen, Faisal, and Katsioloudes 2017; Naguib and Jamali 2015; Naser et al. 2009). Despite these regulatory and economic changes, patriarchal and societal norms, attitudes and values regarding gender roles have remained rather unchanged (Barragan, Erogul, and Essers 2018; Erogul 2011; Goby & Erogul 2011). Nevertheless, the academic achievements of women in this context continue to outnumber and outperform those of men (Danish and Smith 2012; Faisal, Jabeen, and Katsioloudes 2017; Jabeen, Das, and Katsioloudes 2015; Majumdar and Varadarajan 2013).

Other studies have shown that the negative perception of women playing nontraditional roles, such as entrepreneurship, has not deterred them. Women have shown great agility in overcoming various social challenges by manifesting confidence (Ahmad 2011a, 2011b; Erogul 2011; Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki 2011; Kemppainen 2019); expressing satisfaction with their achievements (Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki 2011); showing great enthusiasm (Ahmad 2011b); rating themselves highly in terms of interpersonal relations, idea generation/product development, general management and organizational skills (Welsh et al. 2014); and exhibiting a stronger appetite for entrepreneurship (Danish and Smith 2012) and a higher risk-taking tendency than men, contrary to the general literature on women entrepreneurship (Majumdar and Varadarajan 2013). Women entrepreneurs do so through their persistence and determination without revolting against the norms and culture within which they live and work (Barragan, Erogul, and Essers 2018).

Moreover, there seems to be tension in the literature. Some studies have argued that the diversification of a national economy is reliant on young women entrepreneurs (Jabeen, Das, and Katsioloudes 2015); others have argued that women lack entrepreneurial skills, management skills, business experience and industry knowledge (Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki 2011; Kemppainen 2019).

In the reviewed studies, most informants were younger than 40, and more than half were married, had children and were well educated (Ahmad 2011a; Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki 2011; Jabeen, Das, and Katsioloudes 2015; Jabeen, Faisal, and Katsioloudes 2017; McElwee and Al-Riyami 2003; Naser et al. 2009; Weeks 2009). In this context, marriage and starting a family at a young age are encouraged (Kemppainen 2019; McElwee and Al-Riyami 2003). Some studies have included divorced women entrepreneurs (Alexandre and Kharabsheh 2019; Alkhaled ; Naser et al. 2009) but have neglected the interplay between personal and business lives and the possible influence thereof on their entrepreneurial activity. In the literature, much attention has also been devoted to entrepreneurial motivations. Thus, I dedicate the next section to a discussion of this theme in further detail.

The motivations of women who enter entrepreneurship

The second key theme relates to women’s motivations to embark on entrepreneurial activities. Studies have found that women entrepreneurs in this context are mainly pulled into entrepreneurship (Ahmad 2011b; Alexandre and Kharabsheh 2019; Faisal, Jabeen, and Katsioloudes 2017; Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki 2011; Jabeen, Das, and Katsioloudes 2015; Naser et al. 2009). That is, economic motivations seem to be secondary, and self-fulfilling motivations are the primary motive (Danish and Smith 2012; Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki 2011; Jabeen, Das, and Katsioloudes 2015; Sadi and Al-Ghazali 2010), except for divorced women, who have rated economic necessity as their primary motive (McElwee and Al-Riyami 2003). Other scholars have found that women choose to engage in entrepreneurial activity to gain control over their personal and professional lives (Erogul and McCrohan 2008). The second most common entrepreneurial motivation is the need to balance work and family life (Ahmad 2011b; Belwal, Belwal, and Al Saidi 2014; Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki 2011; Jabeen, Das, and Katsioloudes 2015). One study comparing Emirati women entrepreneurs to other Arab women entrepreneurs in the UAE has found that Emirati women are pulled into entrepreneurship but that other Arab women in the UAE are pushed into entrepreneurship (Naguib and Jamali 2015). Interestingly, some studies have found no difference between men’s and women’s entrepreneurial intentions (Ahmed, Amponsah, and Johnson 2019). Research on university students indicates no difference in terms of the strong propensity among students to become entrepreneurs, although women express a higher need for achievement than men (Majumdar and Varadarajan 2013). A study on university students in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) (Almobaireek and Manolova 2013) shows that students of both genders are motivated to embark on entrepreneurship for economic reasons. Moreover, male students express a broader range of entrepreneurial motivations than female students. Almobaireek and Manolova (2013) evaluated push and pull motivations, necessity-based versus opportunity-based entrepreneurship, career reasons and social learning among university students when developing their hypothesis. They find that young women students expressed more necessity-based arguments with a narrower range of entrepreneurial motivations than men. In a comparative study of men and women in 13 countries in the MENA region, Bastian and Zali (2016) investigate how educational attainment and entrepreneurial competencies affect entrepreneurial motivations. Their study reveals that educational attainment levels and competencies are significantly higher among men and that men benefit more than women from the opportunities available to them. Other studies on university students claim that their perceived support from formal institutions, educational institutions and family influences students’ entrepreneurial intentions (Mohammed 2019; Sowmya, Majumdar, and Gallant 2010). Other studies suggest that family norms have more influence on students’ entrepreneurial intentions than family business ownership (Vracheva, Abu-Rahma, and Jacques 2019); another study shows that the entrepreneurial readiness of students is strongly linked to their parents’ employment status (Tipu, Zeffane, and Ryan 2011).

The ventures of women who enter entrepreneurship

The third identified theme concerns the ventures established by women entrepreneurs. Studies suggest an observable increase in women entrepreneurs in the UAE over the last decade, and they attribute this increase to the strong efforts made by the government to promote entrepreneurship, with most enterprises having sole proprietorship as their legal form (Ahmad 2011a; Almobaireek and Manolova 2013; Erogul 2011; Ghouse, McElwee, and Durrah 2019; Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki 2011; Jabeen, Das, and Katsioloudes 2015; McElwee and Al-Riyami 2003). However, many entrepreneurs also have family members as shareholders. The sectors of these businesses include service (Ahmad 2011a; Alexandre and Kharabsheh 2019; Barragan, Erogul, and Essers 2018; Belwal, Belwal, and Al Saidi 2014; Danish and Smith 2012; Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki 2011; Jabeen, Das, and Katsioloudes 2015; McElwee and Al-Riyami 2003; Naguib and Jamali 2015; Weeks 2009), retail (Ahmad 2011a; Jabeen, Das, and Katsioloudes 2015; Weeks 2009), manufacturing (Ahmad 2011a; Danish and Smith 2012; Weeks 2009), oil and gas, information technology and logistics (McElwee and Al-Riyami 2003). There seems, then, to be a contradiction in the literature. Some studies have suggested that women entrepreneurs garner low revenue (Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki 2011), while others indicate that women garner substantial revenue (Weeks 2009). One study shows that it takes an average of five years for women entrepreneurs to begin scaling their entrepreneurial ventures. A few studies have also found that women are active in internationalization; nonetheless, this activity is limited to imports and does not include exports (Ahmad 2011b; Weeks 2009). According to Weeks (2009), 56% of the informants in her study lacked a website but relied on other technologies to present their venture (Ahmad 2011b). Various studies have also suggested that women entrepreneurs depend on word-of-mouth as a key promotional activity (Ahmad 2011b; Jabeen, Faisal, and Katsioloudes 2017), in addition to social media (Ahmad 2011b; McAdam, Crowley, and Harrison 2019, 2020), bazaars, print media and text messages (Ahmad 2011a).

This leads to the second contextual dimension, ‘where’, which is discussed below.

The “where”

According to Welter (2011), the ‘where’ addresses the different locations in which entrepreneurship occurs and that in turn impact the ‘who’. Here, I found two main themes: (1) the institutional dimension and (2) contextual challenges. Across most of the reviewed studies, the point of departure is the challenging institutional and social context for women entrepreneurs. Thus, two key subthemes are discussed here in further detail: business financing and patriarchy.

Institutional dimension of the Gulf States

The first identified theme relates to the unique institutional dimension of the Gulf States. The studies in this review suggest that women represent 60% to 77% of university graduates (Goby & Erogul 2011; Majumdar and Varadarajan 2013). One study suggests that women’s unemployment is four times higher than men’s unemployment and that 78.3% of unemployed women are highly qualified university graduates (Welsh et al. 2014). Entrepreneurship seems to be the solution to these economic issues (Majumdar and Varadarajan 2013) and has prompted large investments and activities that encourage and foster entrepreneurship in general and women entrepreneurship in particular (Ahmed, Amponsah, and Johnson 2019; Erogul 2011; Jabeen, Das, and Katsioloudes 2015; Kemppainen 2019).

Scholars have offered different perspectives and debated whether religion, i.e., Islam, has been a factor impeding and hindering women’s participation in the economy or whether it is the still prevalent patriarchal, tribal culture (Ahmad 2011b; Barragan, Erogul, and Essers 2018; Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki 2011; Jabeen, Faisal, and Katsioloudes 2017; Naguib and Jamali 2015; Tlaiss 2015). Some authors suggest that family remains the most important social institution and that it plays an important role in every aspect of an individual’s life, from politics to the economic, social and religious spheres (McElwee and Al-Riyami 2003). Family membership signals important messages to those in the surrounding environment in terms of identity and status, and it can be powerful in facilitating access to different resources (McElwee and Al-Riyami 2003).

Others have stressed that according to Islam, men and women are equal and that religion does not forbid women’s economic activity (Ahmad 2011b; Barragan, Erogul, and Essers 2018; Erogul 2011; Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki 2011; Naguib and Jamali 2015). This group of scholars has opposed the idea that religion hinders women’s economic participation, arguing that Islam legitimizes and has a positive perception of women’s entrepreneurship, providing women with strong legal and economic rights, independent of the men to whom they are related (Jabeen, Das, and Katsioloudes 2015; Naguib and Jamali 2015; Naser et al. 2009). Others have pointed to the patriarchal misinterpretation of this religion (Ahmad 2011b; Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki 2011; Tlaiss 2015).

Numerous scholars have also suggested that a combination of both culture and religion hinders women entrepreneurship (Erogul 2011; Jabeen, Das, and Katsioloudes 2015). One study indicates that regardless of whether it is due to religion, culture or both, women are not expected by society, tradition or religion to provide for their family and that when they earn an income, it is considered disposable (Erogul 2011) or supplementary family income (Ghouse, McElwee, and Durrah 2019).

Contextual challenges

The second theme identified in relation to the ‘where’ contextual dimension focuses on challenges. That is, many of the reviewed studies address the various challenges that women face in this context on different levels. On the macro and societal level, studies identify how security and political concerns (Barragan, Erogul, and Essers 2018), bureaucratic institutions and a lack of coordination among government institutions (Ahmad 2011b; Almobaireek and Manolova 2013; Danish and Smith 2012), a lack of market studies (Sadi and Al-Ghazali 2010), patriarchal religious interpretations (Ahmad 2011a; Barragan, Erogul, and Essers 2018; Faisal, Jabeen, and Katsioloudes 2017; Naguib and Jamali 2015), male guardianship (Ahmad 2011b; Erogul 2011; Welsh et al. 2014) and sociocultural constraints and attitudes (Barragan, Erogul, and Essers 2018; Goby & Erogul 2011; Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki 2011; Naguib and Jamali 2015) drive gender issues (Ahmad 2011a, 2011b; Barragan, Erogul, and Essers 2018; Erogul 2011; Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki 2011; Kemppainen 2019; Welsh et al. 2014). There are, however, some contradictory findings; for instance, some studies on women entrepreneurs in Oman claim that these women face no sociocultural hindrances (Belwal, Belwal, and Al Saidi 2014), while others define sociocultural issues as a key aspect that hampers women’s entrepreneurial activity (Ghouse et al. 2017).

On the firm level, access to capital (Ahmad 2011b; Almobaireek and Manolova 2013; Faisal, Jabeen, and Katsioloudes 2017; Weeks 2009), access to a men network (Goby & Erogul 2011), employee retention (Weeks 2009), the domination of a few investors of the market (Sadi and Al-Ghazali 2010), acquisition information (Ahmad 2011a, 2011b; Faisal, Jabeen, and Katsioloudes 2017; Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki 2011; Welsh et al. 2014), and necessary information for establishing an online business (Alexandre and Kharabsheh 2019) are some of the identified challenges.

On the individual and family levels, a lack of support and resistance from family and society (Ahmad 2011b; Goby & Erogul 2011; Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki 2011; Welsh et al. 2014) as well as family responsibilities (Almobaireek and Manolova 2013; Faisal, Jabeen, and Katsioloudes 2017; Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki 2011; Welsh et al. 2014) constitute the challenges. Informants have argued that women become an easy target for society when they fail to effectively balance their personal and professional lives (Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki 2011). One study has illustrated the confusion that women experience in terms of aligning their roles or boundaries with political, economic and social changes (Barragan, Erogul, and Essers 2018).

Some studies have indicated that while governments have been incentivizing women to embark on the entrepreneurial journey, they have not been equipped with the necessary training and education, which can hinder their success (Danish and Smith 2012; Faisal, Jabeen, and Katsioloudes 2017; Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki 2011; Weeks 2009). Other studies have suggested that even though a government may have changed certain laws to encourage women entrepreneurs, familial norms continue to supersede constitutional law (Ahmad 2011b; Erogul 2011; Goby & Erogul 2011) whereby no patriarch is challenged by the government in terms of his actions or decisions (Erogul 2011). Interestingly, a few studies have noted changes in the perceptions of challenges, especially among local young women entrepreneurs and recent graduates from American and British universities (Naguib and Jamali 2015). Despite all these contextual challenges, women in this context have managed to secure senior positions in different fields (Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki 2011; Jabeen, Das, and Katsioloudes 2015) and are clearly on the rise as successful women entrepreneurs (Almobaireek and Manolova 2013; Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki 2011; Jabeen, Das, and Katsioloudes 2015). Some women have even established an entrepreneurial activity that is recognized and ranks among the fastest growing companies in Saudi Arabia and the largest contributors to employment (Almobaireek and Manolova 2013). In the following section, I detail two key contextual challenges, namely, business financing and the patriarchal nature of the context.

Business financing

The first key subtheme identified relates to contextual challenges in business financing. The literature review in this study has found that women tend to rely on personal savings or funding from friends and family to finance their entrepreneurial activities (Ahmad 2011a, 2011b; Alexandre and Kharabsheh 2019; Belwal, Belwal, and Al Saidi 2014; Ghouse, McElwee, and Durrah 2019; Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki 2011; Jabeen, Faisal, and Katsioloudes 2017; Kemppainen 2019; Welsh et al. 2014). Some studies attribute the use of personal savings as seed capital to the ‘wealthy nature of UAE nationals’; thus, these women may not feel the need to acquire funding from banks (Danish and Smith 2012; Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki 2011). Others suggest that women’s low reliance on formal sources of funding and their lack of familiarity with acquiring loans or reluctance to seek bank loans are due to the bureaucratic nature of these institutions (Jabeen, Das, and Katsioloudes 2015; Jabeen, Faisal, and Katsioloudes 2017). These studies, however, seem to ignore one important aspect, touched upon in a single reviewed paper: there is a general tendency to avoid bank loans, as they do not adhere to Islamic banking traditions (Jabeen, Das, and Katsioloudes 2015). Nevertheless, the authors do not elaborate much on this aspect.

Patriarchy

The second key subtheme identified in this review concerns the patriarchal nature of the context. Almost all the papers in this review imply that women entrepreneurs are embedded in a patriarchal society that is dominated by a male power structure. According to these papers, the strong domination of men over the focal power structures influences every aspect of women’s lives, such as their education, finance, travel and business opportunities (Ahmad 2011b; Barragan, Erogul, and Essers 2018; Danish and Smith 2012; Erogul 2011; Erogul and McCrohan 2008; Erogul, Rod, and Barragan 2019; Goby & Erogul 2011; Langworthy and Warnecke 2020; Mathew 2010; Naguib and Jamali 2015). In Saudi Arabia, this domination is further reinforced by the norms associated with men guardianship (Ahmad 2011b). Therefore, women who wish to embark on an entrepreneurial journey have to carefully navigate their activities ‘to respect the sensitivities of individuals and wider societal mores, and simultaneously engage with the commercial realities of day-to-day trade’ (Danish and Smith 2012). Some studies have found that this navigation consists of the efforts and strategies made and adopted by women to convince their husbands, fathers and brothers to support them in establishing their entrepreneurial activity, involving very careful and conscious efforts to reconcile the different demands of their businesses and families (Barragan, Erogul, and Essers 2018; Erogul 2011; Erogul and McCrohan 2008; Erogul, Rod, and Barragan 2019; Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki 2011). The literature argues that while these women look up to their father, uncle or grandfather, when he has business experience, as a role model (Alexandre and Kharabsheh 2019), they must carefully navigate different social norms to secure support from their family in general and the men in their family in particular to gain access to networks and resources (Barragan, Erogul, and Essers 2018; Erogul 2011; McElwee and Al-Riyami 2003; Welsh et al. 2014), in addition to legitimacy (Erogul 2011; Hashim, Naldi, and Markowska 2020), operational support (Ahmad 2011b; Barragan, Erogul, and Essers 2018; Erogul 2011; McElwee and Al-Riyami 2003), and emotional support (Erogul 2011; McElwee and Al-Riyami 2003). Other studies have suggested that women may be strategic in their (dis)obedience regarding cultural and familial norms (Barragan, Erogul, and Essers 2018). Furthermore, some studies briefly allude to the fact that women in this context are embedded in multiple families and must therefore deal with different patriarchs, such as a father, a husband, a brother, an uncle, or a cousin (Barragan, Erogul, and Essers 2018; Erogul 2011; Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki 2011; Welsh et al. 2014). This factor is important; studies stress that families ‘watch to see whether a woman fails’ (Erogul 2011; Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki 2011), which can put enormous pressure on a woman entrepreneur and, understandably, represents the main challenge articulated in the literature (Erogul 2011; Naguib and Jamali 2015). On the other hand, family support, especially from the men to whom they are related, is key for women entrepreneurs to succeed in this context ((Erogul, Rod, and Barragan 2019; Erogul 2011; Jabeen, Das, and Katsioloudes 2015; Jabeen, Faisal, and Katsioloudes 2017. This finding indicates that in this context, men can play an active role in constraining and/or enabling women entrepreneurs (Barragan, Erogul, and Essers 2018; Erogul, Rod, and Barragan 2019). Despite the overwhelming influence that family in general and men in particular have on women entrepreneurs, no study has included family members in its sample. Only one study included five men in a focus group (Naguib and Jamali 2015): three Emirati men and two Arab men from Egypt and Jordan. This study shows some interesting differences between local and nonlocal Arab men. Specifically, the wives of the local Emirati men embarked on entrepreneurship as a choice and to fill their free time, while the other men suggested that their wives had to embark on entrepreneurial activity out of necessity and to help them financially (Naguib and Jamali 2015). The men in this study therefore seemed to agree that when women work, many things in their family are compromised. For example, their children grow closer to their caretaker than their mother, and they (the husbands) are affected as well (Naguib and Jamali 2015). As another interesting insight, while women entrepreneurs have expressed that their entrepreneurial activity offers them a feeling of self-actualization and empowerment, the men in this study interpreted this feeling as ‘transgressing traditional boundaries in the context of marriage and relationships’ (Naguib and Jamali 2015, 147). This study thus highlights the confusion regarding these new gender roles and how men may express an ‘ambivalent attitude’ toward the women (Naguib and Jamali 2015, 147).

The “when”

The ‘when’ points to the temporal and historical context (Welter 2011). Hence, below, I discuss the key themes identified in relation to the salient historical and temporal dimensions.

Historical and temporal dimensions

In terms of history, women entrepreneurs can relate to a strong and well-respected role model, the Prophet’s wife, Khadija bint Khuwaylid. Studies have found that women entrepreneurs point to this historical and important figure to legitimate their work as entrepreneurs (McAdam, Crowley, and Harrison 2019; Naguib and Jamali 2015). Others have referred to a formal professional organization for women named after this critical symbol, the Khadija bint Khuwaylid Center, part of the local Chamber of Commerce in Jeddah (Danish and Smith 2012).

Some studies have also stressed that the Gulf States share similar religious, historical, social and political backgrounds (Kemppainen 2019; Naser et al. 2009). These nations are young monarchies, created during the twentieth century following European and American colonialism in the region (Bertelsen et al. 2017).

The discovery of oil in the Gulf States has contributed to the swift economic and social development of these nations (Ahmad 2011b; Bertelsen et al. 2017; Danish and Smith 2012; Mathew 2010), their advances in education and health, and the decreased participation of women in their economies (Danish and Smith 2012; Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki 2011). This unprecedented economic growth has attracted large investments in infrastructure that demand a labour force, and the fastest and easiest solution has been to attract foreign labour and experts (Bertelsen et al. 2017; Majumdar and Varadarajan 2013). Thus, in many of these nations, the number of economic migrants exceeds that of the local population (Almobaireek and Manolova 2013; Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki 2011; Majumdar and Varadarajan 2013), resulting in an economy that is highly dependent on foreign men male workers (Kemppainen 2019; McElwee and Al-Riyami 2003; Naser et al. 2009).

Over the last decade, governments in the Gulf States have become acutely aware of this steady increase in their populations and the need to diversify their economies, reduce their dependence on oil income and create job opportunities for their highly educated young people (Almobaireek and Manolova 2013; Majumdar and Varadarajan 2013; Naser et al. 2009). It is estimated that more than 50% of the population of Saudi Arabia is younger than 24 (Almobaireek and Manolova 2013). This top-down promotion of entrepreneurial activity seems to have had a positive impact on entrepreneurial intention (Elnadi and Gheith 2021).

In the remainder of this section, special attention is given to the findings on “doing context”.

Doing context

Recent studies seem to have moved away from the descriptive and direct application of Western concepts, more clearly arguing for the need to give women a voice and to harness their experiences (Alkhaled ; McAdam, Crowley, and Harrison 2019, 2020). Tlaiss (2015) is among the first to do so in her study of how Islamic business ethics impact the businesses of women entrepreneurs in the Gulf States. She finds that women have the agency to ‘transform, rationalize and internalize the external regulations of Islam regarding business’ (p. 871) and that women not only use the Prophet’s wife as a role model, as highlighted above but also use the Prophet himself as a role model. Therefore, these women are doing context by ‘individually interpreting the Qur’an [beyond] traditional, conservative interpretations … to legitimize their entrepreneurship’ (p. 871). Through this approach, she claims to challenge mainstream studies linking ‘Islam with women’s inabilit[y] to progress or succeed in their career’ (p. 873). These various studies reflect the different themes of the enactments that women entrepreneurs engage in while doing context in the Gulf States. These different enactment themes are (1) unmaking context, (2) making context and (3) remaking context, which are discussed in further detail in the remainder of this section.

Unmaking context

The first theme of doing context reflects how women in this context avoid the open confrontation and open defiance of deeply held social values and norms. Nevertheless, this avoidance does not mean that they are passive and do not challenge different norms, traditions and patriarchal structures. Alkhaled (2021) suggests that unlike the Western understanding of solidarity and political activism, in this context, solidarity is achieved through ‘quiet encroachment’. This refers to a process that evolves over time and entails the use of women’s own businesses to empower other women and develop feminist awareness before lobbying for policy change as political activists. Some studies adopt the lens of emancipation and find that women engage in microemancipation to overcome patriarchal constraints, referred to as ‘strategic (dis)obedience’ (Barragan, Erogul, and Essers 2018). Strategic (dis)obedience is the balance between compliance with or defiance of established boundaries that ensures access to resources and support. Erogul, Rod, and Barragan (2019) suggest that women entrepreneurs in the UAE are actively engaged in co-constructing entrepreneurial identity work through negotiations with the men in their personal network. Alkhaled and Berglund (2018) also adopt the emancipation lens in their comparative study of women entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia and Sweden, finding a conceptual difference between emancipation and empowerment. That is, empowerment is when women successfully act within a given system, while emancipation involves the ‘collective challenge that follows from empowerment when entrepreneurs come together to change oppressive structures with the aim of achieving collective freedom … [leading] to institutional change … through new entrepreneurial groupings’. Ennis (2019a, 386), on the other hand, offers a more critical view and suggests that casting entrepreneurship as a form of liberation for women in this context is ‘yet another means through which Western-rooted ideologies and institutions can “save” and liberate women in the Middle East’. Indeed, she finds that the push and promotion of women entrepreneurship, while successful across the Gulf States, often ‘reproduce[es] or reinforc[es] gender norms [and] introduce[es] new forms of subjugation’. She further critiques empowerment through entrepreneurship to ‘underline [the] (orientalist) assumptions [that] ascribe positive value and liberating power to capital and neoliberal modes of economic organization premised on the idea that women in the region are awaiting exogenous economic liberation’ (Ennis 2019a, 369). Her study therefore indicates that the top-down promotion of women entrepreneurship not only forces women to ‘navigate their way through competing tensions of state and market, traditional and progressive, global and local and more’ (Ennis 2019a, 379) but also relieves the Gulf States of salient, necessary and, at times, controversial social, economic and political reforms and interventions.

Accordingly, these studies seem to indicate that women in this context confront competing logics that push and pull them in opposing directions. These women are actively engaged in unmaking their context, mainly through a subtle process. As I have clearly explained this unmaking of context, in the remainder of this section, I discuss the making and remaking of context in the literature.

Making context

The second theme of enacting context entails negotiation with the family, mostly represented by the family patriarch, whether father or husband, as well as other institutions and individuals in the public sphere. I refer to this theme as making context. Barragan, Erogul, and Essers (2018, 586) argue that women seem to be caught in a ‘dilemma between disobeying and obeying the boundaries established by men in the family’; however, these men can be an important resource for women in this context (Erogul 2011). Thus, Barragan, Erogul, and Essers (2018) find that women entrepreneurs direct most of their efforts ‘toward the social relations of power with men’ by being consistent and exercising patience to continuously explain, persuade and attempt to convince the patriarchs in their families. Hence, women also have to be entrepreneurial in finding alternative solutions to conduct their business until they manage to obtain approval from the men to whom they are related (Barragan, Erogul, and Essers 2018). Other women identify and then transform the restrictions imposed on them in this context into business opportunities (McAdam, Crowley, and Harrison 2020). Some women embrace the power of technology in their entrepreneurial activities, creating a safe space that transforms their lived realities, challenges different social and cultural norms and overcomes institutional voids (McAdam, Crowley, and Harrison 2019, 2020). This form of enactment increases the social legitimacy of women entrepreneurship, paving the way for and reducing the obstacles to future generations of women entrepreneurs (McAdam, Crowley, and Harrison 2019, 2020). In turn, these changes have a subsequent effect on institutions, which are forced to change due to bottom-up changes in social and cultural norms (McAdam, Crowley, and Harrison 2019). Engaging in entrepreneurial activity rather than traditional occupational roles also seems to enact a change in women’s social positions, particularly in family relations (Hashim, Naldi, and Markowska 2020; McAdam, Crowley, and Harrison 2020). One study on how women gain legitimacy in this context has found that women have to address different legitimacy evaluators in their private and public spheres to gain different forms of legitimacy (Hashim, Naldi, and Markowska 2020). The common thread in their legitimacy formation process is thus how women use and promote their meritocracy within and outside their business. This finding emphasizes that meritocracy seems to create a context where the traditional social capital known as ‘Wasta’ does not play a prominent role (McAdam, Crowley, and Harrison 2019). Other authors show that sharing and sometimes even exaggerating their ‘small wins’ and ‘speaking in their father’s language’ are useful for women in enacting transformation in their familial and societal relationships (McAdam, Crowley, and Harrison 2019). Hashim, Naldi, and Markowska (2020) argue that an important aspect of this legitimacy formation process is the alignment of their business with ‘large voices’ to gain the highest form of national legitimacy, i.e., royal validity. This issue is further discussed in the following section on remaking context, but what is relevant and important here is that the legitimacy that women acquire through their entrepreneurial activity enacts change not only in their family norms but also in their position in their family, to the extent that they become their ‘father’s equal’ (Hashim, Naldi, and Markowska 2020, 13), i.e., the patriarch of the family. Other researchers have found that women entrepreneurs become the ‘guardian’ of their sisters when travelling, traditionally a position held by men in the family and, until recently, a mandatory legal practice for women in Saudi Arabia (McAdam, Crowley, and Harrison 2019).

Taken together, these findings illuminate how the active agency of women entrepreneurs in enacting their context through persistent negotiation and diplomacy, both for and through their entrepreneurial activity, can have a powerful impact on their social position in the family and society in general. Nevertheless, this impact may not have become viable without the strong top-down promotion of women entrepreneurship, which leads to the theme of remaking context, discussed below.

Remaking context

While unmaking and making context reflect the enactments performed in response to individuals’ motivations and business needs, the third theme, doing context, reflects the enactments performed in response to societal logics or what Hashim, Naldi, and Markowska (2020) refer to as ‘large voices’. There can be numerous, different logics and large voices in a society, some of which can even contradict each other (Ennis 2019a). For example, as elaborated above, various studies have discussed whether religion, i.e., Islam, is one of the key logics contradicting the idea of women’s engagement in entrepreneurial activity. Tlaiss (2015), who draws on women’s own experiences, shows how they use the logic of their religion, Islam, to enact their entrepreneurial activity in different ways. The logic of religion can be used to motivate, legitimate or use religious figures as role models (Tlaiss 2015). Women’s business success also seems to be motivated by their adherence to different Islamic teachings and values. One last important insight in this study is women’s agency in enacting religion individually rather than drawing on the interpretations of others.

Another strong and prevailing logic is the push toward entrepreneurship (Ennis 2019a). As elaborated above, entrepreneurship in this context is a rather new phenomenon for both men and women, who have been attracted to and absorbed by the public labour market due to the social contract of the rentier state. Thus, most of the literature included in this review unsurprisingly emphasizes the strong efforts in the Gulf States to advocate, fund, invest in, and promote entrepreneurship in general and women entrepreneurship in particular. As discussed above regarding the ‘who’ contextual dimension, the literature review also shows that one of the strongest logics is the family in general and the family patriarch in particular. According to different findings, this logic can even supersede a country’s legislative logic (Almobaireek and Manolova 2013; Barragan, Erogul, and Essers 2018). Ennis (2019a) also suggests that these different logics either enable women to enact the logic of entrepreneurship or to sanction it. However, while women entrepreneurs are engaged in entrepreneurial activities that relieve the state of economic, political and social pressures (Ennis 2013), this literature review shows that women have been left to their own devices in navigating the complexity of these competing logics. Thus, those who manage to succeed are not only recognized with royal awards, tokens and publicity, encouraging others to follow suit (Ennis 2019a; Hashim, Naldi, and Markowska 2020) but also, enter into a relationship of reciprocal legitimacy, enacting a bottom-up promotion of entrepreneurship locally and regionally while embodying a women-friendly brand image internationally. Consequently, women entrepreneurs are not only remaking context for and through their entrepreneurial activity but are also remaking and reshaping the image of their country.

Next, I provide some directions for future research by discussing the processual aspects of doing context and bringing attention to the historical and economical contextual dimensions. Moreover, I conclude the study by focusing on certain novel social and cultural contextual dimensions and proposing several research questions.

Directions for future research

Developing a context-specific epistemology of the Middle East facilitates a better understanding of the microcultural processes that exist in a particular context, generating novel insights into the salient and unique gendered processes, the potential impact they may have on women’s everyday entrepreneurship and, more interestingly, providing an understanding of how these women enact and do context (Baker and Welter 2020). More importantly, it enables scholars to explore new terrain in the field of entrepreneurship by asking new research questions that reflect and embrace the lived realities and experiences of these women. As such, this section is dedicated to opening future research opportunities by identifying research questions for further study. The first set of research questions primarily concerns processual future research questions connected to ‘doing context’. The remainder of this section proposes several future research avenues related to the various themes that emerged in the literature review. Figure 1 thus visualizes an organized framework derived from the literature review findings.

Figure 1. Organizing framework derived from the thematic analysis of the literature. Note that the solid boxes and arrows represent topics that have been discussed in the current review. The boxes in the dashed frames offer directions for future research.

Processual future research avenues related to “doing context”

The themes that emerged in the literature review indicate that women entrepreneurs in this context adopt nonconfrontational approaches to unmake their context. While various studies have moved beyond comparing men and women (Henry, Foss, and Ahl 2016), in this particular context, men and women are embedded in societies where loyalty to family and other social groups can facilitate access to necessary resources and networks for business start-up and growth. Thus, it might be worth exploring the gendered process of ‘doing context’. For instance, social capital has been considered an important asset for entrepreneurs to gain access to various resources (Kim and Aldrich 2005) and has been studied, mainly in Western and individualistic societies (Kropf and Newbury-Smith 2016). A similar concept exists in the Chinese context, ‘guanxi’, which has started to receive scholarly attention (Lee, Pae, and Wong 2001; Luo 2007; Tsang 1998; Xin and Pearce 1996). However, little scholarly attention has been given to the concept of ‘Wasta’, despite its pervasive role in the Arab context (Ramady and Ramady 2016; Tlaiss and Kauser 2011). The word Wasta is used to signify the ‘use of connections’ to obtain certain outcomes (Ramady and Ramady 2016). While the use of Wasta is a common practice among both men and women in all facets of life (Al-Hussain and Al-Marzooq 2016), the literature offers only a limited understanding of the concept (Tlaiss and Kauser 2011). Thus, an interesting research avenue would be to explore the gendered process of Wasta in the context of the Arab Gulf States.

The literature review also suggests that women engage in making their context through persistent negotiation and diplomacy, both for and through their entrepreneurial activities. What this might signal is how these women reproduce the collectivist society in which they are embedded. This is interesting, as most industrialized Western societies have adopted individualism as the core value that directly and indirectly influences individuals’ behaviour (Kropf and Newbury-Smith 2016). However, it is not necessarily the core value in collectivist societies that rely more heavily on the value of group cohesion (Alatas 2014). As such, while some scholars have framed the efforts and the work that women put into negotiation and diplomacy as a challenge, these might be more accurately framed as a valuable skill that women need to do context. Future research could thus consider exploring what entrepreneurship means for women in the Gulf States and what it means to be a woman entrepreneur in the Gulf. That is, future research has the potential to further unpack the negotiation and diplomacy process that women perform in their entrepreneurial activities. With whom do they negotiate and how? Exploring this type of question will eliminate imposed assumptions of the possible need for external economic empowerment and emancipation and maintain the voices of the informants.

Finally, the literature review suggests that women entrepreneurs actively engage in creating context by responding to societal logics, including the logics that are reinforced and embedded, in an effort to create a transition in economies that have relied on the rents generated from oil wealth to neoliberal economies dependent on the individual. This is interesting, as most of what has been elaborated concerning transitioning economies and entrepreneurship has been related to the transition of Central and Eastern European countries from socialist markets to rather liberal markets that embrace entrepreneurship (Aidis et al. 2007; Bliss and Garratt 2001; Smallbone and Welter 2001). Notably, these changes are happening at a very fast pace that is accelerating, which may have the opposite effect and thus a more negative impact on women, especially if other social logics, such as family logics or religious logics in relation to inheritance and divorce, are not changed or modified to the same extent and at the same speed (Hashim 2021). As such, some potential research questions could explore what role women play in supporting the transition of rentier economies. This is critical, given the accelerated change that these societies are undergoing in meeting the Vision 2030 goals (Alshareef 2022; Ng, Wood, and Bastian 2022). For instance, some of the issues captured in the literature review suggest that issues such as men guardianship are among the barriers for women. However, in 2019, this law was abolished. Consequently, it would be interesting to capture whether such changes in the legal system have improved the situation for women or if the relevant cultural norms remain stronger than legal institutions. It might also be worthwhile to consider the potential dark sides of women entrepreneurship in the context of transitioning rentier economies (Beaver and Jennings 2005; Shepherd 2019).

Historical and economical contextual dimensions

This review indicates that women entrepreneurs in the focal context mostly do not engage in open defiance, which may have contributed to the orientalist view of women in this context as passive victims (Ennis 2019a). This literature review shows that imposing Western theories on the ‘other’ may not offer an accurate reflection of the multiple realities experienced by those in the ‘ghetto’. Adopting postcolonial theory, as in Alkhaled (2021), can broaden and extend theory and advance knowledge. For instance, the literature on entrepreneurship in general and on women entrepreneurs in particular seems to make a sweeping and generalized distinction between women entrepreneurs in developing or developed countries. As articulated in the literature review conducted by Jennings and Brush (2013, 691): ‘In less developed countries, women tend to become entrepreneurs due to necessity for survival, nutrition, health care or family educational reasons (Minniti 2010); in developed countries, there is evidence that they are frustrated by a lack of career advancement opportunities (Belcourt 1990; Buttner and Moore 1997)’. This view could be inherited from the historical orientalist depiction and view of the East by the West (Said 1979). In terms of the studies in this review, this orientalist depiction seems to fall short, as many women entrepreneurs in this context are well educated, have access to financial resources and are actually pulled into entrepreneurship. One possible research avenue, then, is to explore, through an orientalist lens, the discursive practices among academic scholars when studying women entrepreneurs in the Gulf States.

Related, but differently, parts of the Middle East were colonialized by different European powers, such as France, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom or Italy (Ozkazanc-Pan 2008). For example, Bahrain was first occupied by the Portuguese; later, it was subject to British rule and, more recently, American influence. Future research on women entrepreneurship could draw on the political science literature to explore how such colonial heritage and history impact entrepreneurial activities today. Baker and Welter (2020) suggest that ‘doing context’ can be carried out in discussion and through images. To this end, future research could explore the promotional material of entrepreneurs – with what language and who is depicted in these images – to understand the role of language and image, over time, in constructing contexts for entrepreneurship. Future studies could also focus on how entrepreneurs signal the quality of the services and products that they offer, with reference to Western countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom and France, and how such signalling influences the businesses of entrepreneurs.

Drawing on the recent interest in and calls for indigenous theory (Bruton et al. 2021), one possible way to investigate this issue could be by drawing on the work of the ‘powerful social thinker’ Ibn Khaldun (Connell 2018), who has studied ‘Arabs, Israelites, Persians, Greeks, Byzantines, Turks and Berbers’ (Alatas 2014, 21). He argues that a key aspect in the make-up of this context is the notion ‘Aṣabiyyah’, which means ‘a sense of common cause and destiny, and the binding ties of loyalty that are founded to a great extent but not exclusively to blood ties’ (Alatas 2014, 31). ‘Aṣabiyyah’ comprises three forms of relationships: ‘blood ties (silat al-raham), clientship (walā), and alliance (hilf)’ (Alatas 2014, 31). Scholars such as Connell (2018) and Alatas (2014) have also called for researchers to explore the potential for new insights by adopting Ibn Khaldun’s work. Nor is the field of entrepreneurship averse to borrowing theories from other disciplines (Zahra 2007). Introducing the work of Ibn Khaldun may therefore offer new insights into entrepreneurship by exploring how women navigate and access the different types of ‘Asabiyyah’ relationships in their entrepreneurial activities. Furthermore, this review indicates that there is a strong top-down promotion of women entrepreneurship in the Gulf States but low actual economic participation of women in the economy (De Vita, Mari, and Poggesi 2014; Itani, Sidani, and Baalbaki 2011, Langworthy and Warnecke 2020; Welsh et al. 2014). Scholars seem to attribute this low economic engagement of women to culture, religion and family. However, the work of Ennis (2019a) and other political scientists offers alternative explanations. This stream of literature suggests that the wealth generated from oil rents leads to an economic condition known as the ‘Dutch disease’, which minimizes the role of women in the national economy (Ross, 2008). In the context of the Gulf States, the government controls the natural resources and the distribution of wealth from them; in return, citizens are not expected to pay taxes to the state. This special arrangement between the government and the people has resulted in a unique social contract in which the government must “secure its citizens’ well-being … materialized by generous subsidies, free access to services such as health and education, [and] the provision of occupational and income security through government jobs” (Eide and Rösler 2014). Understanding these underlying contextual issues can not only address the bewilderment expressed by scholars regarding the tendency to seek career opportunities in the public sector and the low economic engagement of women (Faisal, Jabeen, and Katsioloudes 2017; Jabeen, Faisal, and Katsioloudes 2017; Majumdar and Varadarajan 2013; Mathew 2010; Naguib and Jamali 2015; Naser et al. 2009; Zamberi; Ahmad 2011b) but may also explain the tremendous efforts made by these governments to encourage, support and fund entrepreneurship as an alternative career. A possible future research path, then, could explore the positive and negative impact of the top-down promotion of women entrepreneurship, with a specific focus on its return on investment for these governments and its potential impact on the economic and social challenges faced by these nations.

The literature on women entrepreneurship developed in the Western context has provided important insights into the masculine nature of entrepreneurship by associating it with different points in history; furthermore, this research has been conducted “by men, about men and for men” (Marlow 2020; Holmquist and Sundin 1988; Ahl and Marlow 2012; Eddleston and Powell 2008; Mirchandani 1999). Nevertheless, in a non-Western context, the phenomenon may not be as gendered, not only because it is a rather new phenomenon for both men and women but also because the relevant historical and religious associations are different (Ennis 2019a; Tlaiss 2015; Tlaiss and Tlaiss 2015). For example, in the context of the Gulf States and perhaps the Muslim world, the historical and important role model of the Prophet’s wife, someone who was a strong, well-respected and wealthy businesswoman, has embedded historical, religious and cultural associations. This review indicates how women entrepreneurs use this historical role model to legitimize their entrepreneurial activity. Accordingly, while historical and economic narratives can provide women with the possibility to legitimize their pursuit of entrepreneurial activity, social structure and patriarchy can play a critical role in delegitimizing women and their entrepreneurial ventures. Therefore, one possible research avenue is to explore how women entrepreneurs engage in entrepreneurial activities that might be considered socially, religiously, or culturally unacceptable. For instance, a recent and interesting case in this context concerns a woman entrepreneur who established a legitimate sex shop. Despite being a legal business importing product that this woman claimed was religiously acceptable, she was subjected to intense criticism, encountered difficulties with customs officials and was taken to court. What is perhaps most interesting about this case is the conflicting logics: Although the business adhered to legal frameworks and religious values, the entrepreneur endured much hardship from patriarchs. Dancers or businesses that sell alcohol are other possible businesses where these conflicting logics may be common.

Social and cultural contextual dimensions

The entrepreneurship literature has indicated that entrepreneurial activities are embedded in the family (Jennings and Brush 2013). Given the importance of family in this context and the complexity of women’s embeddedness in multiple families, future research can problematize the concept of family to better understand how the multiplicity of family systems influences and shapes entrepreneurial opportunities, venture creation and resource mobilization (Aldrich and Cliff 2003). Furthermore, given the important role that family plays in this context, future research could explore what aspects of a family’s socioeconomic status are important in this context and how they influence entrepreneurial activity, extending the intersectionality literature.

Furthermore, women entrepreneurs have a significantly lower proportion of men in their social network in the early stage of business establishment; they thus adapt and attain a similar network to men entrepreneurs as they grow and succeed (Klyver and Terjesen 2007). However, in a patriarchal society, women, by nature of the context, are more engaged with men in the early stages of the establishment of their businesses. Thus, in this context, women may actively seek to reduce men’s involvement in their businesses in the early stage of establishment. Alternatively, women may seek to involve different forms of masculinity in their entrepreneurial activities. The women entrepreneurship literature has clearly and consistently pointed to how hegemonic masculinity has had different, negative effects on women entrepreneurship (Ahl 2002, 2006; Marlow and Patton 2005). However, there have been limited efforts to problematize men as a category. Therefore, future research could explore how the different forms of masculinity enacted by men influence women’s entrepreneurial activity.

As a related but distinct point, this review notes that divorced women indicate that their primary motive for entrepreneurship is economic necessity (McElwee and Al-Riyami 2003). This finding offers another future research opportunity. The literature on women entrepreneurs in this context has mainly included research informants who are married. A few studies have included research participants who have experienced divorce. However, no studies have problematized the experience of divorce and women entrepreneurship. This opens another important research avenue, especially because divorce has a negative stigma in this context and family courts have not been reformed to the same extent as the economy. This lack of reforms in family courts forces women into a very vulnerable position and to fight lengthy court battles that impact their mental health and well-being. Therefore, future studies have the potential to develop important research and to contribute to the scant and emerging literature on how entrepreneurial well-being leads to eudaimonic well-being, which focuses on fulfilment and self-realization rather than just happiness (Nikolaev, Boudreaux, and Wood 2020; Ryff 2019; Shir, Nikolaev, and Wincent 2019; Stephan 2018; Stephan et al. 2020), by exploring how the divorce experience influences women’s entrepreneurial activity.

Some studies have also found differences between women entrepreneurs who are Gulf State nationals and nonnational Arab women entrepreneurs based in the Gulf States (Naguib and Jamali 2015). Such findings not only point to the importance of within-group comparisons (Henry, Foss, and Ahl 2016) but also highlight how many studies have deliberately ignored issues in relation to class or simply ignored it. Thus, future studies have an opportunity to unpack class and provide novel insights, especially in relation to the discussion on intersectionality that has gained momentum in the entrepreneurship literature, to show how inequality concerning economic activities varies among gender, race and class (Acker 2006; Crenshaw 2005) and other potential markers of identity. More specifically, there may be an opportunity to further explore different social classes in this context and how class influences entrepreneurship.

Additionally, more recent studies have attempted to unpack other aspects that could reveal and provide novel insights via ingroup comparisons. For instance, while the focus on rural entrepreneurship (Fitz-Koch et al. 2018), and rural women entrepreneurship specifically, has gained traction in the mainstream literature (Berglund et al. 2018), only one recent study has focused on the issues that rural women entrepreneurs encounter in Oman (Ghouse, Durrah, and McElwee 2021). Another comparative study reveals the differences among Saudi women entrepreneurs by comparing those ‘who stayed in, moved out, or moved to the conservative patriarchal context of Saudi Arabia’ (AlShareef, 2022) in terms of their entrepreneurial action and access to resources. Future research could thus delve deeper into the heterogeneity that exists in each of the Gulf States, such as among women entrepreneurs from Bedouin backgrounds and women from families embedded in more urban societies. There may also be some novel insights generated by exploring the potential differences among different Bedouin tripes and how these influence and shape women’s entrepreneurial activity and agency.

Studies on women entrepreneurship have revealed that entrepreneurship activity can be motivated by factors that extend beyond economic gain (Jennings and Brush 2013). These studies have challenged the traditional emphasis in the entrepreneurship literature on measuring success in terms of growth in sales, profits and/or employees, showing that women are less likely than men to attach the same amount of value to economic goals (Carter et al. 2003). Other researchers have shown that women entrepreneurs are more likely to aspire to strike a balance between economic and noneconomic goals (Brush 1992). For example, Tlaiss (2015) suggests that women entrepreneurs enact Islamic business ethics in their entrepreneurial activities and use such ethics to legitimize their work. However, I argue that this stream of studies can be broadened by unpacking other important Islamic values that can provide novel insights into entrepreneurship. Here, I propose two Islamic values that can offer valuable insights to the current debates regarding entrepreneurship. One important Islamic value is the concept of ‘Rizq’, i.e. God’s blessings and/or favours. Materialistic wealth is one type of Rizq; in contrast, well-being, health, children, knowledge, freedom and a good marriage are nonmaterialistic forms of fortune and wealth that people in this context and are conscious of. According to Islamic doctrine, the best way to acquire Rizq is through entrepreneurship (Faizal, Ridhwan and Kalsom, 2013). Coupled with this concept is the idea that Muslims should aspire to please God in all their actions. Thus, their behaviour and what they consider success are weighed against this criterion (Al-Sadr, 1982). Another key concept is Riba. Riba means bank interest, which is forbidden by Islamic doctrine. Thus, entrepreneurship studies on entrepreneurial capital and financing cannot apply Western theories without considering this underlying religious logic. One possible research avenue, then, is to explore how entrepreneurs source their capital in this context. The logic of Riba has also given rise to banks that offer Islamic financing. Studies could thus delve more deeply into Islamic financing to better conceptualize whether entrepreneurs use this form of financing and how.

A related but different contextual dimension is the Islamic interpretation of marriage. This is an important point that has not been discussed in the literature, even though the majority of the research participants in the reviewed studies were married. The partnership between a man and a woman through marriage in Islam is unique. Marriage is not limited to ceremonial or religious acts; it has a formal transactional nature and operational purpose (Abdal Ati, 1982). Marriage is formalized between two parties (a man and a woman) through a formal contract and in the presence of witnesses (Al-Ati, 1977). The marriage contract, which is more accurately translated by the Arabic term ‘aqd alnikah’, i.e., the intercourse contract, suggests general guidelines for family formation with mutual expectations (Al-Ati, 1977). However, both parties can agree to conditions in their contract that may not be in line with these general guidelines, such as for the woman to work and provide for the family. This contract is not only a religious act but also a legal contract that is registered with a court. This religious and legal contract stipulates that both parents are responsible for the family’s welfare and for the well-being of children, including their mental and spiritual socialization. However, it assigns the father the responsibility of providing for the material necessities of the mother and children (Al-Ati, 1977). Thus, the woman is not expected by religion, law, traditions or social norms to financially contribute to her family. Therefore, this social construction suggests that economic dependency on men is a right. Entrepreneurs have been characterized as individuals who take risks, with men being framed as risk takers and women as more risk averse. Future research could therefore explore this context, an ideal empirical setting for evaluating the reverse, as women are not obliged by religion, traditions, or culture to provide for themselves and their families and may thus have more freedom or space to embark on entrepreneurial activities without taking financial risks. However, men in this context may be more risk averse, given the responsibility bestowed upon them, religiously, legally and culturally, to be the sole breadwinner.

Contributions

This review contributes to the women entrepreneurship literature in three significant ways. First, entrepreneurship research on women has made core contributions to the field (Jennings and Brush 2013) by identifying the men bias in the field and highlighting the gendered nature of entrepreneurship (Ahl 2002b, 2006; Ahl and Marlow 2012; Marlow 1997). It has moved beyond the individualistic and heroic notion of the entrepreneur by showing how entrepreneurial activity is embedded in the family (Brush 1992; Budig 2006; Eddleston and Powell 2012; Jennings, Hughes, and Jennings 2010; Loscocco and Leicht 1993). It has shifted the focus from opportunity as the driver of entrepreneurship to necessity as a potential driver (Brush 1990; Fischer, Reuber, and Dyke 1993; Welter, Smallbone, and Isakova 2006), and it has revealed that the goals of engaging in entrepreneurial activity can include nonfinancial goals (Brush 1992; Carter et al. 2003; Eddleston and Powell 2008). While this body of research has been key in advancing the literature, most of these studies have been conducted in and reflect a Western context, compelling many scholars in entrepreneurship (Baker and Welter 2017; Al-Dajani et al. 2013; Bruni, Gherardi, and Poggio 2004) and in other fields (Connell 2014, 2017, 2018; Dinh and Calabrò 2019; Van De Ven 2011; Van de Ven and Jing 2012) to call for more inclusiveness by encompassing other contexts and highlight the diversity of entrepreneurship. This review responds to such calls, first, by reviewing and offering a comprehensive and structured account of the state of women entrepreneurship in the Gulf States.

Second, the literature offers three conceptualizations of how women in the Gulf States ‘do context’. Primarily, women entrepreneurs prefer subtle approaches to unmaking their context rather than open confrontation. This subtle enactment is performed through their entrepreneurial activity, a legitimate platform that enables them to engage in political and social reform. Furthermore, women entrepreneurs are heavily engaged in making context through negotiation with different social actors, especially the men in their families. Finally, entrepreneurs remake their context by responding to and enacting the ‘large voices’ and logics promoted in their society.

Third, this effort in contextualizing entrepreneurship suggests that contemporary entrepreneurship research has failed ‘to seriously embrace the wondrous empirical diversity of entrepreneurship’ (Baker and Welter 2020, p. Preface). One possible way to redress this failure is to focus on the contexts of entrepreneurship. Despite the growth in entrepreneurship studies that focus on context and that cite Welter (2011), many of these studies still treat context as an environmental factor (Baker and Welter 2020). This treatment of context does not account for the differences in meanings that inform the behaviours of individuals in different contexts and how they enact context (Baker and Welter 2020). This literature review has therefore contextualized entrepreneurship by discussing the ‘who’, the ‘where’, and the ‘when’, in addition to the how, in terms of women entrepreneurs ‘doing context’ (Welter 2011, 2020). Additionally, it has identified key themes in the literature and outlined overlooked research questions by challenging certain taken-for-granted assumptions concerning, for example, marriage, family and social make-up. By outlining these contextual issues, this literature review offers future research avenues leading to the development of a context-specific epistemology of the Middle East that broadens the understanding of the ‘others’.

Acknowledgment

I would like to express my sincere appreciation to the editor-in-Chief Prof Miruna Radu-Lefebvre for her support and invitation to submit the literature review to the journal. I am also extremely grateful for the valuable guidance provided by the editor Prof Natalia Vershinina as part of the MENAGEN Mentoring for Publication Program (MPP) sponsored by the Babson Global Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership. I also wish to acknowledge the anonymous reviewers for their insightful and constructive comments in the development of this article. Earlier draft of this paper was presented at Jönköping International Business School (JIBS) where valuable feedback was obtained by colleagues. Special thanks goes to my previous supervisors Prof. Lucia Naldi and Dr. Magdalena Markowska for challenging me and supporting me in developing the necessary skills in crafting this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.