Explore publications.

Women entrepreneurs in South Africa continue to encounter financial, institutional, geographical, and gender constraints that hinder business growth. This research explores how these interrelated constraints affect women’s entrepreneurial perspectives and the engagement in the small- and medium-sized enterprise sector. Using an interpretivist qualitative method, data were gathered using an open-ended digital survey with 25 women entrepreneurs operating in various South African settings, reinforced by an analysis of pertinent policy and entrepreneurship-related papers. Thematic analysis identified six interconnected themes: financial exclusion and gendered power; gender norms and patriarchal expectations; geographic marginalisation; network and institutional exclusion; intersectional disadvantage; and resilience and survival-focused strategies. Findings show that women embrace adaptive practices such as personal savings, informal finance and diversification, which allow businesses survival but do not always promote sustained success. These barriers limit access to capital, markets, networks, facilities, and value chains, reducing job growth and business competitiveness. Reflecting on feminist economics, decolonial feminism, and intersectionality, the paper contends that women’s entrepreneurship needs to be regarded as a systemic and structural challenge, instead of a single resilience challenge. The research recommends coordinated, gender-responsive actions that promote accessibility to financing, markets, infrastructure, networks and supportive institutions.

Entrepreneurship is crucial for both growing the economy and decreasing the crushing effects of poverty and unemployment. Consequently, higher education institutions have a critical role to play in inculcating entrepreneurial skills in students who may find it challenging to gain employment. This research examined the impact of socio-demographic variables (age, gender, level of study, academic discipline, race and nationality) on entrepreneurship intention. A descriptive quantitative research design was adopted to collect data from a simple random sample of 332 higher education students. This study's findings show no significant difference amongst the respondents in terms of gender, age, race and entrepreneurial intention. On the other hand, the results revealed a statistically significant difference between the respondents' nationality, academic discipline, level of study and entrepreneurship intention. Therefore, higher education institutions should pay attention to the demographics of students to avoid prejudices and to have targeted interventions that will arouse their interest in entrepreneurship. The findings of this study could assist institutional managers and policy-makers in putting in place strategies that could help higher education students actively participate in entrepreneurial activities on campus and treat entrepreneurship as an alternative career.