Female entrepreneurship in Nigeria and access to finance: a comparative study.

Our aim is to better understand access to finance and its role in the development of female-run enterprises in Nigeria. In such a way, we can better understand the gendered context of entrepreneurship and the implications for business growth. The paper adopts an interpretivist paradigm, to explore the social reality within which entrepreneurship is enacted. Qualitative data are interpreted from ten Nigerian entrepreneurs, five males and five females. We find that, though structural support may be apparent, the entrepreneurial process of financing a business is characterised, in part, by social expectations of gender. It is this social view of entrepreneurship we provide an understanding of what it is to be entrepreneurial in practice. While financial institutions and policy makers may assume a 'one size fits all' approach to financial support, the context of gender has implications for the nature of business activity, particularly in a society characterised by patriarchy