Behind the veil: women‐only entrepreneurship training in Pakistan

The purpose of this paper is to understand the gender‐related challenges of Pakistani women entrepreneurs, to explore these women's particular capacity‐building needs, and to assess the impact of capacity‐building programs on the establishment and performance of the women's enterprises.

The paper begins with a review of various theoretical contexts through which to understand women's entrepreneurship in an Islamic socio‐cultural context. From this, the paper derived two working propositions: women in Islamic Pakistan face particular barriers to becoming entrepreneurs; these barriers can be reduced by women‐only training in entrepreneurial competences. These propositions are examined in a three‐part longitudinal process: a field survey to gather information about the training needs of current and potential women entrepreneurs, the design and delivery of a women‐only training module, a follow‐up survey with participants, 18 months later. Subjects and participants were randomly selected, and segmented according to entrepreneurial factors and characteristics.

Results confirm that the barriers perceived by women entrepreneurs in Islamic Pakistan can be alleviated through women‐only training that allows participants to develop capital and competences. Greater clarity about learning outcomes desired and achieved by women entrepreneurs in an Islamic socio‐cultural context can be a basis for designing improved training and education programmes, with a view to women's economic empowerment.

For women entrepreneurs living in an Islamic society, this analysis has implications for understanding the importance and effectiveness of entrepreneurial training especially in a women‐only setting. For policy makers, it turns the spotlight on the need for creating an environment conducive to female entrepreneurship consistent with socio‐cultural structures and gender asymmetries.

There are no comparable previous data on the learning preferences and outcomes of this particular demographic group.