Title: A descriptive literature review of the continued marginalisation of female entrepreneurs in sub-Saharan Africa

Authors: Ernest Etim; Chux Gervase Iwu

Addresses: Department of Entrepreneurship and Business Management, Faculty of Business and Management Sciences, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa ' Department of Entrepreneurship and Business Management, Faculty of Business and Management Sciences, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa

Abstract: Sustaining entrepreneurship requires the participation of every member of society including women. Although they are actively involved as owners and/or managers of small and or/medium enterprises, female entrepreneurs in Africa, specifically the sub-Saharan region, experience a variety of constraints much more than their male counterparts. We ask the question: why do women remain marginalised in sub-Saharan Africa with respect to optimising entrepreneurial uptakes? This paper was written using the descriptive literature review method. The purpose of adopting the method was to carry out a critical, rigorous and transparent appraisal of previous research, so as to understand why the underrepresentation of women in entrepreneurship exists. Essentially, the economic and social standings of women remain barriers to their inclusion in society as citizens because citizenship has always been built in masculine terms where women are not seen as citizens. Our thesis is that an addition to the list of challenges of entrepreneurship should be 'gender' as being female constitutes a big challenge.

Keywords: female entrepreneurship; small and medium scale enterprise; SME; sub-Saharan Africa; gender.

DOI: 10.1504/IJGSDS.2019.096755

International Journal of Gender Studies in Developing Societies, 2019 Vol.3 No.1, pp.1 - 19

Received: 14 Apr 2018
Accepted: 25 May 2018
Published online: 10 Dec 2018 *

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