Rural women entrepreneurship: when femininity compensates for institutional hurdles

The present study investigates the influence of femininity as a cultural value on overcoming institutional hurdles and facilitating entrepreneurial opportunity development by rural women in Iran. We conducted 15 in-depth interviews with rural women entrepreneurs over a year to identify the process of rural women entrepreneurship. Our findings show that when regulative institutions fail to accomplish the expected role in support of rural women entrepreneurship, instrumentalizing the femininity of Iranian culture can overcome the hurdle. We contribute to rural women entrepreneurship by theorizing the influence of femininity as an alternative institutional arrangement in overcoming regulative institutional hurdles and the social construction of new opportunities. We also contribute to theory by further characterizing femininity in Hofstede’s work and suggesting a connection between Hofstede’s macro-level model and micro-level analysis. We frame research results and justify interpretations by providing contextual details to explain how femininity works in a specific Asian cultural context when building women entrepreneurship. We furthermore provide practical implications for policymakers.