A discourse of virtue: how poor women entrepreneurs justify their activities in the context of moderate Islam

Abstract

Entrepreneurship has been both celebrated and critiqued in terms of its ability to assist women in developing countries to overcome the constraints of patriarchy, with recent views acknowledging its potential for incremental, dialectical change. This is particularly true for women entrepreneurs in contexts where Islamic gender relations are practiced, which can pose certain limits to women’s entrepreneurship. We contribute to an emerging stream of research that highlights how women entrepreneurs in such contexts leverage diverse interpretative repertoires to describe and justify their work. In particular, we shed light on the understudied but populous group of women entrepreneurs of lower social class in contexts of moderate Islam. We identify virtuous repertoires as a key discursive element that assists women in these contexts to present their entrepreneurial activities and discuss implications for theory and practice.