The aim of this paper is to find out how Syrian women entrepreneurs in the Egyptian context evaluate their entrepreneurial experience.
This qualitative study comprises semi-structured interviews with 50 Syrian women entrepreneurs in Egypt. The Gioia mechanism was employed to analyze the interview data.
The findings reveal three overarching categories that characterize the entrepreneurial experiences of Syrian women in Egypt: start-up factors, including supportive governmental policies and access to essential resources; gender-related factors, such as the influence of shared cultural norms, instances of unwanted social expressions, and the perception that being a woman can attract client interest; and cultural factors, including the tendency to limit Syrian women’s capabilities to traditional roles (e.g. cooking) and persistent critique from Egyptian women.
This paper contributes by filling a gap in the literature on refugee entrepreneurship in the context of non-Western countries in which studies on refugee women entrepreneurs and their experience with self-employment outside their home countries have been limited so far.
