Religion and Spirituality Empowering Female Refugee Entrepreneurship

Abstract

Female refugees face additional challenges and obstacles on their path to entrepreneurship. This can be explained by intersectionality, taking into account compounded discrimination due to gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status, and also religion. While conservative religious values and norms tend to be portrayed in a negative light, as hindering female leadership and fostering patriarchal views, this chapter assesses the positive impact that religion and spirituality may have for women refugee entrepreneurs. From the perspective of social psychology, it also considers how a comprehensive and creative training for female entrepreneurs should account for the demand-side, supply-side, soft skills, mental health, and religion and spirituality, preceded by a sound analysis of the context.

Spirituality and entrepreneurship: integration of spiritual beliefs in an entrepreneurial journey

“…The process of adopting new business policies is much easier and straightforward in any entrepreneurial venture. We found support in the literature that entrepreneurial ventures have shown more flexibility in quickly adapting to new business policies (Dryjanska, 2020; Gill et al , 2018). Spiritual beliefs are the ecstatic aspect of any human being.…”

“…This reflects the idea that every human being is born with such harmony. Normally, people find their calling in religion and faith (Dryjanska, 2020). However, the grounding of their cognitive beliefs is the initial origins that drive them to certain value systems (Balog et al , 2014).…”