How women entrepreneurs create social change by filling institutional voids: evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

Research on women entrepreneurship in sub-Saharan Africa has documented governmental and non-governmental initiatives to tackle women-related issues raised from informal institutional voids. However, despite the overall improvement of the social status of women in societies, yet this approach takes for granted that women are unable to achieve entrepreneurial opportunities without external assistance. Building on a bottom-up approach, our study addresses this limitation by investigating how and through which mechanisms women in sub-Saharan Africa build an inclusive society through entrepreneurship. Following an inductive multiple case study methodology, we propose a grounded process model which describes mechanisms pursued by women entrepreneurs to overcome women-based constrains while creating an inclusive societal change in local communities. Our study provides fine-grained evidence of institutional working practices to fill women-based informal institutional voids. Moreover, it unveils actions through which women entrepreneurs integrate community-based entrepreneurial initiatives to promote inclusive societies in sub-Saharan Africa.