No woman is an island: cross-generational experiences of navigating entrepreneurial barriers and opportunities in a collectivist culture

The entrepreneurial landscape for women is shaped by the complex interplay of cultural, social, and economic forces (Poggesi et al., 2016), making it vital to explore women's lived experiences to gain a deeper understanding of the challenges and opportunities they encounter (Welter, 2020). Women's entrepreneurship reflects not only individual aspirations but also broader societal expectations regarding gender roles (Hashim, 2023; Marlow, 2020). Historically, Western scholars have tended to portray Arab women in collectivist cultures as constrained by rigid gender norms with limited agency or entrepreneurial potential (Hashim, 2023; Goby and Erogul, 2011). Such representations often obscure the dynamic shifts underway in countries such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where rapid economic development and state-driven gender policies are transforming women's roles in society at different life stages.

Bandura's social cognitive theory (SCT) (1982, 1997) has long been used to explain entrepreneurial behavior by emphasizing the role of self-efficacy: an individual's belief in their capacity to perform specific tasks. Within entrepreneurship research, the derivative construct entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) has been shown to influence entrepreneurial intention, persistence, and risk-taking (Chen et al., 1998; Zhao et al., 2005). However, SCT and ESE have been critiqued for privileging individualistic assumptions about agency and behavior, rooted in primarily Western cultural contexts (Ahl and Marlow, 2012; Calás et al., 2009). This paper responds to growing critiques that such models overlook how agency and confidence are co-produced through relationships, culture, and gendered norms in collectivist societies (Clark and Ozkazanc-Pan, 2016; de Magdalene and Green, 2024).

To better capture this context, I extend Bandura's model by proposing the concept of we-efficacy: the shared belief in entrepreneurial capacity that is co-developed and sustained within social groups. While Bandura (2000, p. 75) introduced the notion of collective efficacy as “people's shared beliefs in their collective power to produce desired results,” this was framed primarily around team or organizational performance. In contrast, we-efficacy operates at the intersection of the personal and the social. It refers to how women develop confidence in their entrepreneurial identity through collective validation, familial encouragement, mentorship, and community recognition. It goes beyond what a group can do together to explain how an individual's belief in themselves is amplified or diminished through the relational scaffolding surrounding them.

While we-efficacy shares resonance with the concept of relational agency (Edwards, 2005), which highlights how action is shaped through joint negotiation and mutual responsiveness, we-efficacy extends this by emphasizing the psychological experience of confidence itself as a co-created resource. In collectivist societies, women's agency is internally constructed and socially co-produced through webs of family, cultural norms, and shared responsibility. This study addresses the dearth of research in such contexts by investigating how ESE is cultivated among two groups: aspiring student entrepreneurs and established women entrepreneurs in the UAE, recognizing that the development of confidence in one's abilities builds over time, rather than being a static construct.

Through semi-structured interviews and a focus group discussion, the ways in which confidence is shaped by structural factors, such as family support, mentorship, access to networks, and evolving social expectations, were examined. I show how we-efficacy is co-produced within a broader web of interpersonal and cultural influences, an insight that challenges the dominant, individualistic narratives around women's entrepreneurial agency. The UAE provides a compelling site for this inquiry as it navigates the tensions between traditional cultural norms and modern policy reforms aimed at advancing gender equality. Initiatives such as the National Policy for Empowerment of Emirati Women – 2031 (U.ae, 2023), the rise of women-led incubators, and the work of women's business councils (Sandhu et al., 2021; Kemp, 2015) signal the state's intent to include women as vital economic actors. However, the translation of such frameworks into tangible outcomes for women, especially younger women, remains unclear.

In the case of UAE women, regardless of life stage, my findings show that confidence is rarely self-generated in isolation. Instead, it is contingent upon “being seen,” having others believe in one's potential, and feeling validated by family, society, and peers, to step into entrepreneurial roles. We-efficacy, therefore, extends SCT by acknowledging that in gendered, collectivist contexts, self-efficacy is not only socially influenced (as SCT enables) but relationally constructed and culturally mediated. In gendered and collectivist environments, women's belief in their entrepreneurial potential is both self-generated and sustained, affirmed, and legitimized through their relationships with others. This perspective opens space for exploring how cultural and relational dynamics act as enablers or barriers to women's participation in entrepreneurship.

By integrating the voices of both emerging and experienced women entrepreneurs, this study contributes to decolonizing the dominant theorizations of self-efficacy, highlighting the socio-cultural embeddedness of women's entrepreneurial pathways. While global reports (e.g. GEM, 2024; UN Women, 2022) acknowledge progressive policy directions in the UAE, this study seeks to inform more contextually responsive entrepreneurship programming that can empower future generations of women. The paper proceeds as follows. First, it elaborates on the theoretical and empirical foundations of the study, and then describes the research methods. The findings are then presented, followed by a discussion of their theoretical, practical, and policy implications. The paper concludes by offering contributions, limitations, and directions for future research.

Building on Bandura's SCT framework, Chen et al. (1998) introduced the concept of ESE, which refers to an individual's belief in their ability to perform various tasks related to entrepreneurship, such as opportunity recognition, resource management, and innovation. ESE has since become a widely used construct to explain entrepreneurial intentions, behavior, and persistence, especially in studies involving gender differences (Sweida and Woods, 2015). In entrepreneurial contexts, the four key sources of self-efficacy beliefs: mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion, and physiological/emotional states (Bandura, 1982) are particularly salient given the uncertainty and innovation required for new venture creation (Chen et al., 1998).

However, recent critiques have highlighted the limitations of self-efficacy theorizing, particularly its individualistic and Western-centric orientation. Feminist and critical entrepreneurship scholars (e.g. Ahl and Marlow, 2012; Calás et al., 2009) argue that such frameworks often ignore the sociocultural embeddedness of entrepreneurial agency, especially for women operating in collectivist or patriarchal contexts. In such settings, women's entrepreneurial confidence is not solely a product of individual cognition. It is also shaped through familial, institutional, and communal dynamics (Bastian et al., 2023; Tlaiss, 2014).

Self-efficacy has traditionally centered on individual cognition and agency. While this framing aligns with many entrepreneurial contexts in Western societies, it underrepresents the relational and cultural dynamics that influence agency in collectivist cultures. Bandura himself acknowledged the importance of group functioning in his later work on collective efficacy (Bandura, 2023), which he defined as a group's shared belief in its joint capabilities to organize and execute actions required to achieve shared goals or outcomes (Bandura, 2000). Collective efficacy is especially relevant in environments where interdependence and communal ties shape behavioral norms and expectations, such as in a team setting (Peng et al., 2023).

This shift from self-to collective efficacy is crucial in collectivist contexts such as the UAE, where individual actions are embedded in social structures. Research by Tan and Yoo (2015) on non-profit organizations in Singapore shows that high levels of collective efficacy, defined in their study as shared organizational confidence, significantly enhance the likelihood of engaging in social entrepreneurship. Similarly, in entrepreneurial team contexts, studies in China have found that collective efficacy positively correlates with team performance and innovation under conditions of uncertainty (Peng et al., 2023). These studies have demonstrated that confidence and motivation can be co-constructed, reinforcing a shared sense of capability among group members.

This study extends Bandura's (2000) work by introducing we-efficacy, a culturally grounded reformulation of ESE. We-efficacy is defined as a collective sense of entrepreneurial self-belief grounded in relationships and shared experiences. In the context of this study, we-efficacy captures the relational confidence (or lack of) that women entrepreneurs derive from their social environments, particularly family, peers, mentors, and community networks. This concept expands ESE to include the influence of social environments in which encouragement from family, visibility of other women entrepreneurs, and institutional trust play central roles (Austin and Nauta, 2016). In collectivist societies such as the UAE, where entrepreneurship often intersects with communal roles and responsibilities, we-efficacy offers a more culturally attuned lens through which to view entrepreneurial self-belief.

This reconceptualization of ESE advances the study's goal of exploring how entrepreneurial self-belief is cultivated among aspiring and established women in the UAE. It adapts Bandura's model to better reflect the sociocultural interdependencies that shape women's agency in collectivist contexts. In doing so, it responds to calls for more contextually grounded, decolonized approaches to entrepreneurship theory (Marlow, 2020; Ahl and Marlow, 2012). Rather than viewing confidence as a solely internal trait, this perspective recognizes how entrepreneurial identity is co-produced through relationships and social approval. For women in the UAE, confidence often emerges through interlinked experiences including securing family endorsement, observing relatable role models, engaging with mentors, and participating in value-aligned communities (Lichy et al., 2021; Fenech et al., 2019). These networks do more than provide access; they scaffold belief in one's capacity to act (Alkhaled, 2021), even amid structural constraints (Al-Dajani et al., 2015).

While we-efficacy builds on the core principles of SCT, it is distinct from several commonly used constructs. Unlike collective efficacy (Bandura, 2000), which refers to a group's belief in its collective action capacity, we-efficacy centers on the individual's self-belief as nurtured within relational networks shaped by their social context. It emphasizes co-constructed confidence formed in group settings as well as through relational proximity, emotional resonance, and cultural alignment. Similarly, social capital (Putnam, 2000) focuses on access to resources through social networks. We-efficacy may be enabled by social capital but highlights emotional and psychological validation, not the transactional advantage that is afforded by social capital.

It is also related to relational agency (Edwards, 2005), which emphasizes the capacity to work collaboratively and interpret others' motives. We-efficacy differs through its focus on the psychological confidence and affirmation granted by relationships to act entrepreneurially. Finally, Spreitzer's (1995) conceptualization of psychological empowerment represents a foundational perspective in empowerment research, defining it as a set of four cognitions: meaning, competence, self-determination, and impact that together reflect an active orientation towards one's work role. While this model positions empowerment as an intrapersonal motivational state, it largely treats the individual as the locus of empowerment. We-efficacy, in contrast, diverges by foregrounding the socially co-constructed nature of self-belief. It recognizes that an individual's confidence in their capacity to act is continuously shaped through relational interactions, shared norms, and collective efficacy cues within their environment.

Thus, while all of the above constructs highlight internalized perceptions of autonomy and competence, we-efficacy extends this by emphasizing the relationally embedded belief system that emerges from and is sustained by social context. By introducing we-efficacy, I respond to calls for more culturally grounded, gender-sensitive extensions of self-efficacy that reflect the lived realities of non-Western women entrepreneurs (Naguib and Jamali, 2015; Henry et al., 2016). This conceptual lens enables a more nuanced understanding of entrepreneurial confidence as a personal trait and collective achievement. Research on women's entrepreneurship has grown substantially over the past 2 decades, with increasing recognition of the contextual and gendered dynamics that shape entrepreneurial intentions and outcomes (Henry et al., 2016; Jennings and Brush, 2013). However, most dominant frameworks remain grounded in Western, individualistic assumptions, often overlooking how agency is socially produced in collectivist societies (Ahl and Marlow, 2012; Calás et al., 2009). In such settings, decisions are embedded within extended family obligations, community expectations, and moral economies that prioritize relational harmony and collective well-being over personal gain (Kauser and Tlaiss, 2019).

Comparative studies in other collectivist contexts have reinforced this expanded view. For instance, in Indonesia and Malaysia, family approval and religious norms are closely tied to women's entrepreneurial intentions (Azis et al., 2018). Familial networks and social trust have been shown to significantly influence women's entrepreneurial activity in parts of Latin America such as Colombia, Peru, and Argentina (Ferro-Cortes et al., 2022). In East Asian contexts, Confucian norms emphasize filial piety and harmony, which can simultaneously constrain entrepreneurial risk-taking and reinforce tightly bonded support systems (Zhou et al., 2021). Even within the Arab world, there is significant variation, with tribal norms, religious interpretations, and state interventions producing diverse entrepreneurial pathways (Tlaiss, 2014; Itani and Green, 2025). Across these contexts, a shared theme emerges: entrepreneurial agency is rarely exercised in isolation. These studies support the framing of we-efficacy as a confidence-building mechanism, suggesting that confidence and entrepreneurial action are often co-produced in interdependent, rather than individualistic, cultural systems.

This framework also builds on the literature that highlights the interplay of personal traits, contextual influences, and educational interventions in shaping women's entrepreneurship. For instance, previous studies have shown that factors such as entrepreneurial education (Azis et al., 2018), proactive personality (Hussain and Imran Malik, 2018), and government initiatives (Alhajeri, 2022) play a role in developing ESE. Notably, young women in patriarchal or traditional societies report higher entrepreneurial intentions when exposed to mentorship, role models, and institutional support (Shahin et al., 2021; Fenech et al., 2019).

The unique tensions faced by women entrepreneurs in the Arab world, who balance economic aspirations with family roles (Shetty et al., 2023; Ennis, 2019; Ahmed, 2018), are also considered. These tensions influence how mastery and vicarious experiences are accessed and interpreted. Programs that enable community-based incubation, access to visible role models, and safe networking environments serve as crucial mechanisms for supporting ESE and we-efficacy development. While the UAE, with its ambitious gender policy reforms and deeply rooted cultural norms (Alhajeri, 2022) and policies such as the National Policy for the Empowerment of Emirati Women (U.ae, 2023) promote institutional support (Hashim, 2023); women's experiences of confidence-building remain grounded in community and kinship networks. In this study, both aspiring and established women entrepreneurs describe how encouragement, modeling, and shared struggles shaped their sense of entrepreneurial readiness. This aligns with Bandura's (1977) emphasis on social persuasion and vicarious learning but shifts the focus from the self as a unitary agent to the self-in-relation.

Figure 1 depicts the conceptual model that extends Bandura's theory to incorporate the collective dimension of ESE (dashed lines and arrows indicate the addition of the we-efficacy concept and its associated sources). Based on this expanded framing and previous literature, this study aims to gain a deeper understanding of how ESE is cultivated in an Arab context, where gender roles, cultural expectations, and institutional policies intersect. Recognizing and strengthening we-efficacy could be a key mechanism to support future generations of women entrepreneurs in the UAE and beyond. In the following section, I outline the steps taken to gather and analyze the data before presenting my findings.

To understand the lived entrepreneurial experiences of women in the UAE, a qualitative interpretivist research design was adopted. This approach is well-suited for capturing how individuals make meaning of their social worlds (Creswell, 2013), particularly within the context of gender, culture, and entrepreneurship. The study draws on two data sources, as indicated in Table 1 below: (1) in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 29 female university students and (2) a focus group discussion with three established women entrepreneurs. This dual-sample hybrid design enabled a comparison of ESE formation at different life stages. The following two research questions were addressed:

1. What are the lived experiences of women engaged in entrepreneurship activities at different life stages in the UAE?

2. What role does self-efficacy play in shaping entrepreneurial intention and actions?

The UAE, as a research setting, provides a unique multicultural environment where Emirati nationals, who make up just 11% of the total population of 11 million people (Federal Competitiveness and Statistics Center, 2024), and expatriates, mainly from Southeast Asia, Europe, and other Arab nations, create a blend of cultures and practices. This presents a unique research context in which diverse cultures and traditions intermingle and unfold in entrepreneurial practices, of which we have limited knowledge. In terms of its history, the UAE is among the youngest nations in the Middle East when seven sheikdoms formed a federation in 1971, shortly after the discovery of large oil reserves that were invested in the country's education, healthcare, and infrastructure (UAE Ministry of Economy, 2024). Today, the UAE is considered to be one of the world's wealthiest nations, and it continues to grow its economy, with less reliance on oil production and a greater focus on tourism and business development (Abdo and Paris, 2017).

The UAE has been actively promoting entrepreneurship and innovation in recent years, with a focus on creating a conducive environment for startups and small businesses through initiatives such as free zones focused on technology and finance, government support through the Ministry of Economy and Khalifa Fund for Enterprise Development, and education (UAE Ministry of Economy, 2024; Sandhu et al., 2021). Commitment to education is evident in the number of female students at Emirati universities, with over 60,000 female students enrolled in 2024 (Education Middle East, 2024). Furthermore, more than half of all students at most Emirati universities are female, with more female students pursuing postgraduate studies (Education Middle East, 2024).

Previous studies have presented contrasting assertions about women's entrepreneurship in the UAE, on the one hand highlighting the munificence and autonomy that women have in terms of entrepreneurial activity, and in terms of resources available to them through state, religious, and family support (Bastian et al., 2023); however, it has been reported that the establishment of women-owned businesses remains substantially lower than that of men (Naguib and Jamali, 2015). According to the latest Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) report (2024), challenges remain in terms of women entrepreneurs' ability to break stereotypes and seize opportunities, but there is a growing recognition of the country's commitment to creating a conducive, gender-inclusive environment for women's economic empowerment.

Purposive sampling was employed to recruit participants who could offer insight into the formation of ESE through lived experiences. This study sampled two groups of participants to capture diverse generational perspectives on women's entrepreneurship in the UAE: (1) 29 female university students with entrepreneurial aspirations, and (2) three established women entrepreneurs who had transitioned from formal employment into business ownership. While the student participants had not yet formally launched ventures (although some already owned small side hustles), they offered rich insights into emerging entrepreneurial identity development, informed by their perceptions, intentions, and experiences within educational and familial settings. This decision was grounded in the recognition that entrepreneurial aspirations often take shape early in one's life course, influenced by early exposure to entrepreneurial role models and family dynamics (Laspita et al., 2012), yet much of the literature on women entrepreneurs focuses narrowly on individuals who have already achieved business ownership, thereby overlooking the developmental and contextual factors that precede entrepreneurial action.

This study was approved by the Social Sciences Ethics in Research Committee of the author's university. Anonymity and confidentiality were maintained throughout the study. A research assistant was employed to work on this study and was responsible for conducting and transcribing student interviews. Students were approached at three UAE-based university campuses, one of which is the largest university in the country with a majority female student base (78%). They were recruited to participate in interviews after they provided informed consent. In terms of sample selection, for the student sample, the only criterion was that the participants were female and currently enrolled in a UAE-based university. Both Emirati nationals and expatriate students across different fields and years of study were selected to reflect the diversity of the UAE'seducational landscape and enhance variability within the sample (Aguinis, 2025).

The established women entrepreneurs were found through internet searches and were among 14 women entrepreneurs identified for the focus group discussion. In terms of selection, the aim was to invite women entrepreneurs from diverse fields and backgrounds to enrich the discussion. These participants were selected based on their active roles in local entrepreneurial ecosystems and willingness to share their insights in a public forum. Although five women accepted the invitation, two had to cancel on the day of the event due to personal circumstances. The focus group was conducted during a university event on Emirati Women's Day (28 August 2024), attended by approximately 60 female students and faculty members, and was led by the author. The three established UAE-based women entrepreneurs came from diverse industries, including education, sustainable tourism, and social services.

In qualitative research, the sample size is determined by thematic saturation rather than statistical generalizability (Aguinis, 2025). After 29 interviews, no significant new themes emerged, suggesting that saturation had been achieved. The size of the student sample aligns with prior qualitative entrepreneurship research that investigates nuanced constructs, such as entrepreneurial identity and self-efficacy (Guest et al., 2006). For the focus group, the aim was not breadth, but depth, eliciting reflective dialog among experienced entrepreneurs in a dynamic group setting.

The decision to use multiple data sources was driven by the need to capture a broad spectrum of experiences and perspectives. The dual-sample design enriches our understanding of how confidence, identity, and support systems evolve across time and context. Interviews with university students provided insights into the aspirations, challenges, and support systems perceived by those at the beginning of a potential entrepreneurial journey. In contrast, the focus group with established women entrepreneurs offered insights in a group setting (Naguib and Jamali, 2015) and encouraged reflections on actual entrepreneurial practices, barriers overcome, and the strategies they employed to succeed in a traditionally male-dominated field. The combination of interviews and a focus group enabled the comparison and contrast of the expectations and lived realities of the women entrepreneurs.

All interviews and the focus group were guided by a semi-structured interview protocol (Edwards and Holland, 2013), allowing for both consistency and flexibility in the data-collection process. Students were asked about their understanding of entrepreneurship, the presence of entrepreneurs in their familial and friend networks, their perceptions of the challenges and opportunities related to entrepreneurship for women, and their aspirations, if any, related to entrepreneurial activities. During the focus group, the discussion with the three women entrepreneurs centered on their journeys to becoming entrepreneurs, the challenges and rewards experienced, entrepreneurial wellbeing, and then the discussion opened up for questions to the audience, in which the entrepreneurs offered advice on building networks and support systems, learning opportunities through venture building, and the value of mentorship. The student interviews averaged 25 min each, while the focus group discussion lasted 90 min. The interviews were conducted in English, recorded with participant consent, and transcribed verbatim. Pseudonyms were assigned to the data files to ensure confidentiality. The transcripts were stored securely in an encrypted cloud storage.

A thematic analysis using ATLAS.ti (v24.1.1) (2024) was conducted using Braun and Clarke's (2006) six-phase approach as a reflexive guide. First, transcripts were read multiple times to establish familiarity. Initial codes were generated and grouped into categories. Through iterative refinement, these categories were consolidated into higher-order themes related to gender norms, ESE, cultural expectations, and support systems. To ensure the credibility of the findings, the author reviewed the codes with respected colleagues in the same department to sense-check the emerging codes and themes (Byrne, 2022).

Data from students and established entrepreneurs were initially analyzed separately to respect differences in life stage and experience, and then brought together during the thematic synthesis to highlight convergences and divergences across the two groups. Specifically, interpretations and assumptions regarding the data were discussed and reconciled iteratively during several meetings, resulting in a final, agreed-upon set of defined themes (see Figure 2). This collaborative and reflexive approach enhances the trustworthiness of the findings (Van Burg et al., 2022). Analysis resulted in three overarching themes which underpin the proposed framework of we-efficacy. By combining individual and group perspectives and ensuring rigorous data collection and analysis, this methodology offers a robust foundation for understanding how ESE develops across different stages of the female entrepreneurial journey in the UAE.

As a woman researcher working in a public university in the UAE, my position is both embedded and privileged. I teach and conduct research in entrepreneurship, often with women entrepreneurs, and I am deeply aware of the cultural nuances, opportunities, and contradictions that shape women's career and entrepreneurial aspirations in this context. This dual identity as educator and researcher offered me insider access and trust with student participants, while my professional standing enabled me to access a network of founders whose experiences enriched this study.

However, I also recognize that my position carries interpretive power and cultural limitations. While I share gendered experiences of navigating both professional and entrepreneurial spaces, I do not fully share the lived experiences of being a student or a business founder in the UAE. To manage these limitations, I maintained a reflexive journal throughout the research process, documenting moments of dissonance, insight, and uncertainty. I also employed member-checking with participants where possible and engaged in peer debriefing with colleagues to validate interpretations and surface potential blind spots (Berger, 2015).

The findings of this study illuminate how women in the UAE at different life and career stages negotiate entrepreneurial aspirations within a rapidly evolving sociocultural context. The reflexive data analysis process identified three themes: the acknowledgment of a changing sociocultural landscape in relation to entrepreneurship, the need for a greater number of female role models and mentorship opportunities, and persistent structural inequities that continue to inhibit access to entrepreneurial opportunities. The themes are presented here for the two sample populations: first, the narratives of aspiring student entrepreneurs are shared, and second, the lived realities of established women entrepreneurs are presented. Lastly, contrasting or reinforcing perspectives across both groups are presented in the cross-group insights section.

1. Aspiring Entrepreneur Student Sample

Theme 1: Navigating Cultural Expectations and Shifting Norms

Female university students described a landscape in which cultural expectations are shifting but still uneven. While there is growing encouragement from families and institutional reforms to support women's entrepreneurship, traditional expectations still exert a strong influence, particularly around gendered responsibilities and perceptions of entrepreneurial credibility. Female students emphasized that societal biases remained a significant barrier to women's entrepreneurial participation, particularly in conservative communities. Persistent cultural norms often position men as the default entrepreneurs, while women engage in entrepreneurship as hobbies. This tension between tradition and transformation creates a complex terrain for women navigating entrepreneurial aspirations, as illustrated by Students D10, D3, and D18 below.

Some students acknowledged historical examples of women's entrepreneurial roles in Emirati households. This counters the assumption that entrepreneurship is a new cultural import. Student D6 reframes entrepreneurship as a culturally embedded practice, previously expressed through home-based enterprises.

These findings describe a cultural context that is gradually becoming more supportive of women's entrepreneurship. However, this support remains shaped by underlying gender expectations. There are persistent assumptions about appropriate sectors for women, highlighting how entrepreneurial legitimacy remains gendered and how familial support can be conditional or constrained by traditional roles, as explained by Students D8 and D16 below.

Theme 2: Building Self-Efficacy through Mentorship, Role Models, and Finding Purpose

Across the aspiring entrepreneur student sample, participants stressed the importance of mentorship and visible female role models in building entrepreneurial confidence. They emphasized the importance of seeing other women succeed. The scarcity of female role models and entrepreneurial networks for women was cited as a significant barrier to building confidence, gaining inspiration, and taking business risks. Students such as D14 and D26 below noted how inspirational stories from women who had successfully launched businesses gave them a sense of what was possible. Student D4 highlighted potential investors who could launch female ventures if there were more opportunities for women's networking.

These perspectives point to a yearning for authenticity and emotional realism in women's entrepreneurial narratives that is presently scarce in students' lived experiences. It also highlights the need for relational reinforcement that is characteristic of a collectivist culture.

Theme 3: Navigating Structural Gaps to Increase Entrepreneurial Participation

Students expressed positive sentiments related to the macro-level environment of entrepreneurship in the UAE. They cited national policy reforms, institutional grants, and overall safety as critical enablers, as highlighted by Students D10 and D12 in the following comments:

Importantly, students also pointed out that these enablers often failed to trickle down to young women lacking capital or insider networks compared to their male counterparts. This perception of opacity and exclusivity reveals how the existence of resources does not necessarily ensure accessibility.

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  Established Women Entrepreneurs Sample

Theme 1: Navigating Cultural Expectations and Shifting Norms

Similar to the aspiring students, the established women entrepreneurs highlighted subtle social negotiations. Although conservative assumptions persist, they are being actively challenged. They highlight the gradual normalization of women's business leadership in recent years. They described their own journeys to navigate societal skepticism and emphasized that cultural shifts, driven by education, media, and state policies, foster greater acceptance of women as business leaders. In the following quote, WE F encourages aspiring entrepreneurs to let go of guarding new venture ideas and taking advantage of the abundance of resources available in the UAE, while WE L provides real-world insights into the pressure and rewards associated with starting a new venture and being the person in charge.

This theme highlights the coexistence of both progress and persistence. New opportunities emerge through policy and reform, whereas older gendered expectations linger. Their framing positions entrepreneurship as more than an economic activity, as an assertion of purpose and legitimacy within societal structures that may fail to recognize it as such.

Theme 2: Building Self-Efficacy through Mentorship, Role Models, and Finding Purpose

This theme was equally evident among the established women entrepreneurs. They reinforced this point by describing how their journeys began by overcoming internal doubts and a lack of reference points. WE L highlights the initial sense of isolation and the lack of social and professional networks in the early stages of her venture as significant challenges to becoming an entrepreneur. She describes how even modest support from others had a profound impact.

The established women entrepreneurs also shared the link between finding their purpose and the gradual building of their confidence through diverse life experiences. They highlighted the entrepreneurial path unfolding as a purposeful extension of prior careers. WE L mentioned the greater social purpose of her work, driving her business activities. Similarly, WE A shared her transition from a finance career to launching her business, prompted not by risk-taking bravado, but by a deeper sense of purpose and the gradual building of confidence that came with all of her cumulative work experiences:

The second theme demonstrates that self-efficacy does not emerge in isolation. It is fostered through exposure to others' experiences, opportunities to ask questions, and gradual trust in one's capacity to learn and develop entrepreneurial capabilities.

Theme 3: Navigating Structural Gaps to Increase Entrepreneurial Participation

The established women entrepreneurs described these gaps in more personal terms. They described early-stage struggles with isolation, a lack of networks, and difficulty accessing trusted advisors. They stressed the emotional labor of maintaining business momentum amid competing well-being needs (WE L) and family obligations (WE F) as difficult trade-offs.

The above excerpts reveal adaptive strategies for dealing with contextual challenges, showing the negotiation of time for oneself (WE L) or familial responsibilities (WE F). Not only did the established women entrepreneurs highlight the challenges of opportunity access and structural gaps, but they also offered a rich body of advice. They emphasized that business success requires intentionality, alignment with personal values, and a willingness to ask for help. To deal with these challenges, they urged aspiring women entrepreneurs not to pursue entrepreneurship alone and emphasized the value of asking for assistance.

They also critiqued “perfect success stories” in entrepreneurship discourse, encouraging openness about failure as a source of learning and discarding perfectionism.

This theme reveals a paradox: while policies appear to be gender-inclusive, access remains unequal. This reflects a broader gap between policy design and policy experience. Networks and emotional resilience are as vital as grants or enabling policy regulations. Women are often caught between structural progress and individual struggle. A more gender-sensitive relational infrastructure is required to support the full entrepreneurial journey.

Together, the voices of aspiring and established women entrepreneurs reveal the common experiences of tension and transformation. While students were often optimistic and outward-looking, their confidence was shaped by access, or lack thereof, to mentors, networks, and targeted support. They navigate a landscape in which opportunities coexist with deeply embedded cultural expectations. Although national policies and educational environments signal change, lingering gendered norms still shape the perceptions of legitimacy, credibility, and access. Their confidence is emergent and dependent on networks, visibility of role models, and proximity to opportunity.

The established women entrepreneurs looked inward, reflecting on the resilience, values, and relational fabric that sustained their ventures. They described how their self-efficacy was constructed over time through lived experiences and building community support. Their stories reveal the emotional and practical labor required to sustain ventures while balancing familial and societal roles. Crucially, the perceptions and experiences of both groups suggest that entrepreneurial confidence is co-produced rather than self-generated. It is not simply an internal attribute. It is forged through relational experience, communal validation, and socio-institutional scaffolding.

Students and entrepreneurs alike experience a cultural push-pull: tradition still dictates who is seen as “ideal” for entrepreneurship, but a generational shift is making space for women entrepreneurs. Students look to relatable role models to clarify and affirm their entrepreneurial purpose, whereas experienced entrepreneurs often recall the absence of such figures, finding meaning instead in the hard-won lessons of their own journeys. Both of these highlight the power of relational and experiential learning.

Across both student and entrepreneur narratives, confidence in entrepreneurship emerged as a relationally constructed phenomenon. Students' confidence was fragile, contingent on access to visible role models, peer support, and familial encouragement. Entrepreneurs reflected on the gradual development of confidence, shaped by lived experience, caregiving roles, and identity transitions. Both groups converged in their emphasis on external sources of affirmation as pivotal in shaping their belief in themselves as entrepreneurs. Rather than drawing solely from personal mastery or internal resolve, participants pointed to a web of social mirrors – mentors, family members, and communities – that helped them “see themselves” as capable entrepreneurs. This underscores the importance of situating entrepreneurial development within cultural, emotional, and relational contexts, particularly in collectivist societies where communal validation often precedes individual action.

In the next section, I revisit these findings through the theoretical lens of ESE, extending Bandura's original framework to better account for the collectivist, gendered, and relational dynamics observed in this study.

This study explored how ESE is experienced and constructed by women in a rapidly evolving but still patriarchally influenced society. Drawing on interviews with female university students and a focus group of established women entrepreneurs in the UAE, it identified three interwoven themes: cultural navigation, relational confidence-building, and barriers to access. Together, these themes illuminate the complexity of women's entrepreneurial journeys at different life stages. Across both groups, confidence was shown as a co-produced resource, shaped by social connection, cultural recognition, and institutional access, rather than just as a purely internal psychological trait. Based on these findings, this paper advances the construct of we-efficacy, a relationally embedded, culturally situated extension of Bandura's (1982) self-efficacy theory.

This reframing is not simply semantic in nature. The findings show that in collectivist societies such as the UAE, women's sense of entrepreneurial capability is entangled in normative expectations around gender roles, family honor, and social visibility. Students voiced both optimism and internalized doubt. On the one hand, they were hopeful about new opportunities and an encouraging entrepreneurial context, but they still felt constrained by deep-seated beliefs around what is considered “appropriate” for women. Established entrepreneurs, in turn, revealed how their own confidence emerged over time, often despite a lack of support, and sometimes through quiet resistance rather than overt empowerment.

This contribution aligns with and extends a growing body of work that critiques the individualistic bias in ESE research. Scholars such as Ahl and Marlow (2012), Calás et al. (2009), and Jennings and Brush (2013) have long argued that entrepreneurship theory must account for the socio-cultural and gendered embeddedness of entrepreneurial activity. By focusing on the UAE, a collectivist culture undergoing economic diversification, this study offers a situated perspective that challenges universalizing narratives of entrepreneurial agency.

While Bandura (1997, 2023) emphasized mastery, vicarious experience, social persuasion, and physiological states as sources of efficacy (and later included the construct of collective efficacy), these sources are reinterpreted in this context through relational ties, social belonging, and community approval. Women's confidence was rarely described as emerging from individual mastery alone. Instead, and regardless of the generational differences in the sample, it was co-produced through affirmation from mentors, encouragement from family, and through the call for the stories of other women's success. This relational nature of confidence mirrors findings from Kickul et al. (2008), who emphasized the gendered pathways through which ESE is developed, and from Bastian et al. (2023), who called for more nuanced understandings of women's confidence-building mechanisms in non-Western contexts.

Each theme speaks to and extends existing scholarship:

Cultural Expectations and Gender Norms. Participants consistently described how traditional gender norms continue to shape perceptions of women's legitimacy as entrepreneurs, despite visible support from national policy and governmental initiatives. These insights echo the findings of Tlaiss (2014) and Bullough et al. (2022), who noted that cultural ambivalence, between form inclusion and informal exclusion, often generates cognitive dissonance among women. In such environments, as Bastian et al. (2023) argue, confidence is a negotiated process shaped by patriarchal scripts, rather than merely an internal trait. By foregrounding these tensions, this study contributes to calls for context-specific research on gender and entrepreneurship (Henry et al., 2016; Welter, 2020).

Mentorship, Role Models, and Relational Learning: Both groups emphasized the importance of role models and peer mentorship for skill acquisition as well as for emotional anchoring and identity validation. This aligns with Austin and Nauta's (2016) findings that women's ESE is enhanced when mentorship is both competence-oriented and emotionally supportive. In collectivist societies, this relational support becomes even more crucial. Chen et al. (1998) observed that women benefit disproportionately from vicarious experiences, a finding that is reinforced in this study, where mentorship is not just instrumental but deeply affective and identity-affirming. We-efficacy thus builds on Bandura's (1982) sources of efficacy and reinterprets them through communal bonds and cultural embeddedness.

Access Gaps and Structural Constraints: Participants illuminated a confidence-access gap: the difference between formal policy rhetoric and actual ability to access resources. This reflects previous scholarship on the implementation gaps in gender-inclusive policy (Naguib and Jamali, 2015) and the persistence of institutional gatekeeping (Danish and Smith, 2012). While macro-level reforms exist aplenty in the UAE, micro-level gatekeepers, such as banks, family members, and industry networks, often reinforce gendered exclusions. Almobaireek and Manolova (2013) similarly found that women's access to finance and networks remains shaped by gendered perceptions of risk and capability. This study adds empirical nuance to that literature by illustrating how such constraints also dampen relationally formed confidence.

One of the more subtle contributions of this study lies in revealing how women negotiate, rather than directly confront, patriarchal constraints. Instead of adopting confrontational or oppositional strategies, many participants spoke of finding “culturally appropriate” ways to pursue their aspirations. This reflects a negotiation of patriarchal constraints through culturally attuned strategies (Kauser and Tlaiss, 2019). This also resonates with Itani and Green's (2025) findings that women's entrepreneurship in Arab contexts often takes a more humane and collaborative form that makes them agents of change for future generations.

This study makes several key contributions. Theoretically, it contributes to the evolving understanding of ESE by advancing the concept of we-efficacy, a culturally grounded and relationally embedded extension of Bandura's (1982) self-efficacy theory. I have shown that, in a collectivist context, that is, the UAE, confidence is more than an internal psychological construct. It is shaped and sustained by networks of emotional, cultural, and institutional support. We-efficacy offers a novel contribution to the ESE literature by anchoring confidence in culturally specific relational dynamics. This framing better explains how women in the UAE develop entrepreneurial aspirations in environments in which identity, community, and tradition intersect with opportunity. Furthermore, we-efficacy addresses critiques of individualistic bias in entrepreneurship theory (Ahl and Marlow, 2012; Calás et al., 2009) by emphasizing the collective and iterative process through which entrepreneurial identity and confidence are co-produced. It argues for a more culturally embedded model of self-efficacy.

Practically, the findings suggest that educational institutions and policymakers in the UAE and similar contexts must move beyond linear, individual-centered approaches to entrepreneurship support (Ennis, 2019). University programs should embed cohort-based mentorship models that foster a sense of belonging and that reflect the cultural realities of female students. Initiatives such as women-led business councils, storytelling campaigns, and culturally attuned incubator programs with childcare support can mitigate barriers to access, visibility, and emotional well-being (Bastian et al., 2023; Sandhu et al., 2021).

In terms of policy, national mentorship platforms should be incentivized to pair university students with women entrepreneurs across sectors. The expansion of family-friendly infrastructure, including on-site childcare in incubators, can reduce entrepreneurship-caregiving trade-offs that directly impact women's wellbeing and self-efficacy. Entrepreneurship programs should be evaluated beyond participation rates to include the quality of women's experiences in entrepreneurial ecosystems. Finally, it is recommended that the publication of gender-disaggregated data on entrepreneurship program uptake be used to identify and correct access inequities. This is a concrete measure for addressing gender disparities. In doing so, practices and policies can become more responsive to the nuanced pathways through which women develop and sustain their ESE and entrepreneurial ambitions.

This study has several limitations that should be considered when interpreting the findings. First, I acknowledge the small focus group sample of established women entrepreneurs as a limitation of the transferability of my findings. The intent in this study was to gain deep, context-rich insight into lived experiences rather than to generalize findings. Nevertheless, future studies would benefit from a larger and more diverse sample of established women entrepreneurs to further validate and expand on the concept of we-efficacy across different sectors and stages of women-led businesses.

Secondly, the sample was limited to women based in the UAE, including a combination of Emirati nationals and expatriates, which reflects the country's diverse population. While this diversity provides some richness, the sample is not fully representative of the broader spectrum of women entrepreneurs in the Gulf region or other non-Western collectivist contexts. Expanding to other collectivist contexts, such as Latin America and Southeast Asia, would test the transferability of we-efficacy as a construct. Future research could build on these insights by conducting comparative studies across multiple collectivist societies to test the applicability and utility of the we-efficacy construct.

Additionally, the study relied primarily on qualitative data from interviews and a focus group, which limits the generalizability of the findings. Quantitative approaches may assess the strength of the association between relational factors, such as mentorship quality or familial support, and entrepreneurial outcomes for women. Although the reflexive thematic analysis offered in-depth insights into participants' experiences, it did not capture the full variation of entrepreneurial journeys across sectors, age groups, or socioeconomic backgrounds. Expanding this work across cultural, generational, and socioeconomic boundaries can deepen our understanding of how collective confidence in entrepreneurship is built and sustained. Longitudinal research could also examine how ESE and we-efficacy evolve over time, particularly in response to educational interventions or policy shifts. Finally, further exploration is needed into how digital platforms facilitate or hinder relational support among aspiring women entrepreneurs in conservative societies.

This study responds to calls for a more contextually grounded and gender-sensitive understanding of entrepreneurial agency (Bastian et al., 2023; Tlaiss, 2014; Brush et al., 2009). By introducing we-efficacy, it challenges dominant Western individualistic models of self-efficacy and offers a construct rooted in the relational dynamics of collectivist societies. In the UAE, as in many parts of the world, no woman is an island. Confidence grows not in solitude, but in connection with the stories we hear, the support we receive, and the communities that affirm our worth. The introduction of the we-efficacy concept captures this co-constructed confidence, emphasizing that, in collectivist societies, belief in one's entrepreneurial potential is significantly influenced by social validation, shared experiences, and collective identity.

My findings demonstrate that while the UAE'spolicy landscape is formally supportive of women's entrepreneurship, structural barriers, particularly with access to mentorship, networks, and funding, persist in practice. These disparities are compounded by enduring patriarchal norms that subtly yet powerfully shape women's perceived legitimacy as entrepreneurs. Even in a reform-oriented environment, female entrepreneurs must navigate a complex landscape of evolving expectations, familial roles, and inconsistent access to institutional resources. For young women, at the beginning of their entrepreneurial journeys, these barriers are internalized early, reinforcing the need for targeted interventions that foster both skills and confidence. Moreover, the experiences of established entrepreneurs in this study demonstrate that entrepreneurial identity often emerges gradually through alignment with personal values and sustained relational support, not through abrupt risk-taking. This non-linear, affective, and socially situated pathway calls for a reframing of how entrepreneurial development is theorized and supported, particularly in non-Western contexts.

Ultimately, fostering women's entrepreneurship in the UAE requires more than favorable policies or inspiring success stories. It demands an inclusive ecosystem that recognizes the relational nature of confidence, the social embeddedness of ambition, and the culturally specific barriers that women face. By centering women's lived experiences and introducing we-efficacy as a concept, this study not only advances theory but also informs more responsive, culturally attuned practices for entrepreneurship education, mentorship, and policy design.

I wish to acknowledge the United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) Research Office for providing me with a faculty research grant, of which this research study is a part. The startup research grant for new faculty has enabled the services and contribution of a research assistant, as well as funding to present this work at a research conference. I am indebted to UAEU for their support in this project.

I would also like to thank Ms. Safa Veeran Kutty, in her role as research assistant in 2024, for her assistance with data collection and transcription of some of the student interviews used in this paper. I am equally grateful to my colleagues at the Emirates Center for Entrepreneurship Research for their friendly reviews and discussions related to the findings of this study.

I extend my heartfelt gratitude to the members of staff at the Emirates Center for Happiness Research, who assisted me in hosting the Women's Day Entrepreneurship focus group discussion on August 28, 2024.

Last, but not least, a special thank you goes to all the participants of this study, from the wonderfully candid women entrepreneurs to all of the students who were willing to share their lived experiences of entrepreneurship in the UAE.