Reconstructing women's entrepreneurial identity among rural small agrifood entrepreneurs: Agency, rural embeddedness, and stakeholder influence

Abstract

This paper explores how women entrepreneurs in the Republic of Benin, West Africa, reshape their entrepreneurial identities through agency and interactions with supportive stakeholders. Drawing on fifteen semi-structured interviews with women running small agrifood businesses and five interviews with representatives of women-support organizations, including NGOs, development projects and microfinance institutions, the study examines how women move from traditional, gendered roles toward being recognized and recognizing themselves as legitimate entrepreneurial actors. Rooted in scholarship on women's entrepreneurship, rural entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial identity, we emphasize that entrepreneurial identity reconstruction in rural and peri-urban settings is shaped by gendered norms, local reputation, household responsibilities, resource scarcity and stakeholder validation. Our findings show that women's motivation, personal control, self-efficacy and everyday entrepreneurial practice help them challenge socio-cultural constraints, while support organizations provide finance, coaching, recognition and legitimacy. Consequently, women gradually establish themselves as business owners and leaders, even though community recognition remains negotiated and gendered expectations persist. Building on these findings, we outline our study's contributions, policy implications and future research directions for scholarship on women's entrepreneurship, rural entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial identity.