Purpose

International development organizations promote access to resources through self-employment as one of the main strategies to achieve women's empowerment. However, many self-employees are more similar to informal workers than to successful entrepreneurs affecting women's control over resources and their empowerment process. This article analyzes the relationship between informal entrepreneurship and female empowerment in the context of an emerging economy.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors surveyed a sample of 295 female street vendors in Bogotá – Colombia. Contingency and correlational analysis is performed.

Findings

Evidence is found about the expansion of women's capacity to make decisions about resource allocation and time managing because of informal entrepreneurship. Nevertheless, these decisions are not strategic nor given in a context with several options. Several structural constraints to the exercise of agency limit empowerment to an individual process dependent on circumstances instead of a collective process resulting in changes in women's social conditions.

Research limitations/implications

This research allows for a better understanding of the potentialities and opportunities these entrepreneurships offer to women and what strategies could be implemented to take advantage of them.

Practical implications

Despite their characteristics, informal entrepreneurship has potentialities to improve female empowerment especially when factors beyond economic rationality, such as personal, familial and sociocultural, are considered.

Originality/value

The authors discuss the category of informal entrepreneurship in emerging economies and evaluate the success of this type of entrepreneurship with a gender point of view by incorporating empowerment as measure.

中文翻译：

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非正规创业和妇女赋权——哥伦比亚城市街头小贩的案例

目的

国际发展组织通过自营职业促进获得资源，这是实现妇女赋权的主要战略之一。然而，许多自雇人士更类似于非正式工人，而不是影响女性控制资源及其赋权过程的成功企业家。本文分析了新兴经济背景下非正规创业与女性赋权之间的关系。

设计/方法/方法

作者对哥伦比亚波哥大的 295 名女性街头小贩进行了抽样调查。进行了偶然性和相关性分析。

发现

有证据表明，由于非正规创业，女性在资源分配和时间管理方面的决策能力有所提高。然而，这些决定既不是战略性的，也不是在有多种选择的情况下给出的。行使代理权的若干结构性限制将赋权限制在取决于环境的个人过程，而不是导致妇女社会状况变化的集体过程。

研究限制/影响

这项研究有助于更好地了解这些创业为女性提供的潜力和机会，以及可以实施哪些战略来利用它们。

实际影响

尽管有其特点，但非正规创业具有提高女性赋权的潜力，尤其是在考虑到个人、家庭和社会文化等经济理性之外的因素时。

原创性/价值

作者讨论了新兴经济体中的非正规创业类别，并通过将赋权作为衡量标准，从性别观点评估此类创业的成功。