Within developing and disadvantaged economies, women’s self-employment has been identified as a tool to assist in alleviating poverty and empowering individual women. To explore these arguments, this article considers the experiences of Palestinian women who operate home-based enterprises within conservative patriarchal families. Empirically, we drew upon a study of 43 home-based female embroiderers, all members of the ‘1967 displaced Palestinian community’ now living in Amman, Jordan. From the evidence, it emerges that although these women make a critical contribution to family incomes, their entrepreneurial activities are constructed around the preservation of the traditional family form such that while some degree of empowerment is attained, challenges to embedded patriarchy are limited.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to develop an empirically informed conceptual framework to analyse the gendered relationship between empowerment and entrepreneurship contextualised within the lives of displaced Palestinian migrant women operating home-based enterprises in Amman, Jordan. Design/methodology/approach -A longitudinal qualitative study was undertaken during which semi-structured in-depth interviews were regularly conducted with 43 women producing high-quality traditional embroidered goods within home-based enterprises. The empirical material was utilised to inform and illustrate the creation of an empowerment framework. Findings -Entrepreneurship is popularly presented as an individually focused economic undertaking. However, this paper demonstrates it is also a socio-politically situated activity; within this particular context, marginalised subordinated women were empowered through their home-based enterprises. Originality/value -This paper offers a gender informed conceptual framework to inform the analyses of empowerment and entrepreneurship. The discussion describes the necessary processes for development goals to be realised, and explains how traditionally subordinated women can utilise enterprise to contribute to social change. In so doing, the proposed conceptual framework acts as a theoretical illustration of the gendered relationship between empowerment and entrepreneurship.

This study focuses on how the interplay between a firm's absorptive capacity (ACAP), and its technological and customer relationship capability contributes to its overall performance. Using structural equation modeling in a sample of 158 firms (316 questionnaires, two respondents per firm) from South Korea's semiconductor industry, we find that a firm's ACAP leads to better performance in terms of new product development, market performance and profitability when used in combination with the firm's capability to engage state of the art technologies in its new product development program (NPD) (technological capability) as well as cultivate strong customer relationships to gain customer insight in NPD (customer relationship capability). By highlighting the interactive nature of absorptive capacity's antecedents and how these relate to firms' performance, this study contributes to the understanding of the role of ACAP as a mechanism for translating external knowledge into tangible benefits in high-tech SMEs, thus leading to important theoretical and practical implications.

This paper explores the links between entrepreneurship, emancipation and gender within the international development arena. Through a longitudinal analysis of a micro‐enterprise development project in which intermediary organizations contract traditional handicrafts from female home‐based producers, we focus on the impact of contracting policies on the ability of the desperately poor to improve their disadvantaged position. Our critical analysis reveals how intermediaries who impose exclusive contracting conditions, supposedly to protect the women's interests, actually constrain the emancipatory potential of the women's entrepreneurial activities. However, such contractual limitations generate collaborative networks enabling the women to challenge these constraints in an effort to assert control over their activities. Accordingly, this paper contributes to contemporary debates concerning the emancipatory potential of entrepreneurship within the context of development. We advance this analysis through a gendered evaluation of the role of intermediary organizations on entrepreneurial emancipation and related empowerment.

Women and migrants continue to make inroads into the academic labour market in the UK, where their numbers are increasing. However, the same pattern of access is not true for these two groups in terms of their representation in positions of power and influence in the higher education sector in the country. Intuitively, at the intersection of these two disadvantaged groups, migrant women academics in full professorial posts should suffer from frayed careers. Drawing on life‐story interviews with nine migrant women who hold full professorial posts in UK academia, we challenge the frayed careers concept, and the double disadvantage discourse, from an intersectional perspective. Our findings demonstrate the surprising rather than summative nature of intersections between gender and ethnicity and as such lend support to the argument that disadvantages across multiple categories of difference do not necessarily translate into multiple jeopardy at the level of careers. Instead, our study reveals that the status of migrant female academics as double outsiders has more explanatory power than their status as subjects of double disadvantage.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters' suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use.

No abstract

No abstract