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Societies eyeing to achieve extensive development should provide opportunities for the growth and prosperity of women through women's entrepreneurship (Ziyae, Sadeghi, Nejad & Tajpour, 2021). Nevertheless, the disparity in the social status of women is more prominent despite being almost equal in numbers, especially in the subcontinent (Agarwal & Lenka, 2018). Therefore, women's entrepreneurship is the basis for the transition toward the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals (SDG's) by providing innovative products, services and devising ideas to solve social/environmental problems through the business lens (Mahajan & Bandyopadhyay, 2021).
Moreover, the recent global crisis (i.e., climate change and Covid-19) also stresses the need to engage women in entrepreneurship to meet the economic development goals of the countries (Pastran, Colli & Poclaba, 2021). More importantly, startup businesses are the real drivers of economic development (Salim & Anis, 2021). Besides, researchers expect sustainable growth of female entrepreneurship due to the Covid-19 pandemic (Martinez-Rodriguez, Quintana-Rojo, Gento & Callejas-Abinana, 2021). Scholars also find that research concerning women's entrepreneurship started almost three decades ago from western countries and recently expanded to non-western countries due to its significance for economic development (Roy, Mohapatra & Banerjee, 2021).
Prior research reveals that Asia has become the fastest-growing region globally regarding investment, technology, innovation, and production (Khanna, 2019). Women entrepreneurs have a considerable role in this economic development in Asia (Li, Cho & Chaudhuri, 2020). However, the World Economic Forum's (2018) gender gap report ranked Pakistan at 146 among 149 countries regarding women's participation in economic participation and opportunity. Whereas, according to Mckinsey Global Institute's (2018) report on women's equality, the region has a massive spark for economic development by increasing women's roles. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (2018) stressed promoting women's entrepreneurship in Asia for sustainable economic growth.
Consequently, the research on entrepreneurship, especially female entrepreneurship, is a burgeoning area of research in the 21st Century due to its significance for economic development (Rashid & Ratten, 2020). The Asian context of women entrepreneurship is different from the west due to traditional culture and religious beliefs and the multiple inferior statuses of women. Thus, the literature and practice of female entrepreneurship are scarce, specifically in the Pakistani context, despite increasing trends of women entrepreneurship globally (World Bank, 2017). In the United States, females own more than 11.6 million firms that employ over 9 million people and generated 1.7 trillion sales as of 2017. Thus, it increases the importance of studying women entrepreneurs (National Association of Women Business Owners, 2020).
According to the global entrepreneurship index published by the global entrepreneurship and development institute, Pakistan is ranked 109 among 137 countries (Acs, Szerb, Lafuente & Markus, 2019). However, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics survey in 2017-18 regarding employment trends, the female labor force participation is only 22.8% in Pakistan (Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, 2018). Considering the full range of opportunities and gaps in women entrepreneurship (Kalim, 2012; World Bank, 2017), the importance and trend of female entrepreneurship are growing in Pakistan (Abrar ul Haq, Akram, Ashiq & Raza, 2019).