Informal entrepreneurship and women's empowerment – the case of street vendors in urban Colombia

PurposeInternational 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/approachThe authors surveyed a sample of 295 female street vendors in Bogotá – Colombia. Contingency and correlational analysis is performed.FindingsEvidence 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/implicationsThis 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 implicationsDespite 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/valueThe 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.