PurposeExisting gender inequality across all sectors has weakened women’s resilience to risk management. The chaos heightens if they are not only breadwinners of their family but roaring the entrepreneurial world. Disasters and crises hit entrepreneurs equally but post-disaster damages following ripple effects hit hardest to women ruling the one-third portion of the entrepreneurial world. Surprisingly, the post-disaster entrepreneurial challenges of women are overlooked, and the study aims to fill the gap by explaining the right way of empowering women through entrepreneurial initiatives.Design/methodology/approachThe research is based on data collected from 372 women entrepreneurs in the tourism industry of the Andaman Sea coastal area in Thailand by following the cluster sampling technique. The women entrepreneurs of Thailand were chosen as target respondents because women’s participation is more than 40% in entrepreneurial businesses.FindingsThe findings revealed that entrepreneurial marketing, entrepreneurial opportunity and entrepreneurial tenacity have a significant influence on entrepreneurial initiatives and the entrepreneurial mindset successfully mediates between dependent variables and entrepreneurial initiatives.Practical implicationsThis study has important insights for policymakers, women entrepreneurs, institutions and the tourism industry. However, it focuses solely on women entrepreneurs participating in the tourism industry of Thailand. Therefore, future studies are invited to incorporate male entrepreneurs and be conducted in other developed and Asian countries.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the entrepreneurial field by proposing entrepreneurial factors that can help women entrepreneurs restart their businesses, mitigating or minimizing natural disaster effects and proposing pioneering suggestions to uplift the tourism entrepreneurial sector.
