IN SEARCH OF AN INTEGRATIVE FRAMEWORK FOR FEMALE IMMIGRANT ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Abstract

Female entrepreneurship (FENT) has long been presented as primarily driven by necessity, encompassing gendered social processes that push women into venturing to find independence, self-assurance, financial relief, or a more balanced lifestyle. Extant research also identified differences in motivations and barriers to female self-employment in developing versus developed countries. Thus, the article proposes an integrative framework combining Mixed Embeddedness and Institutional Theory to analyze immigrant women’s entrepreneurial process, adopting a multi-theoretical lens to deepen the understanding of women’s entrepreneurial practices, addressing Granovetter’s embeddedness’ inconsistencies.