Feminist Critique of Ghana’s Women’s Entrepreneurship Policies

Abstract

Women’s entrepreneurship is an important medium for poverty reduction, economic growth and development. Nonetheless, it faces critical challenges that limit it from realizing its full potential. Feminist theories bring to the fore the diverse conundrums of women’s entrepreneurship and how to address them. This paper aimed to examine Ghana’s women’s entrepreneurship policies from feminist theoretical perspectives to determine how the policies address gendered barriers and support women’s entrepreneurship efforts. Premised on the transformative research paradigm, the paper involves content analysis of 14 purposively-sampled Ghana’s public policy documents. Consistent with policy expectations of the feminist theories, it was found that there are policies that seek to address gendered discourses, promote change of social structures in support of women’s venturing and enhance women entrepreneurs’ access to resources. Nonetheless, there are still areas that need further attention in all the three theoretical perspectives, particularly in pursuit of change in social structures and gender equality in access to resources. Although the policies justifiably tilt more towards the informal sector, inadequate attention to women operating in the formal sector could serve as a disincentive to the growth and development of their ventures and a deterrent to the graduation of more informal enterprises into the formal economy.