WOMEN ENTREPRENEURSHIP: SUCCESSFUL MODELS FROM UAE

Women Entrepreneurship is the biggest growing business trend across the globe. UAE is considered as one of the most
developed countries in the world, yet limited studies are available to shed light on the women entrepreneurs in
UAE. Women make up 70% of UAE’s university graduates and 44% of the workforce and are key to the UAE’s
economic future. The UAE represents a region that is witnessing an increasing trend of women's participation in
business and entrepreneurial activities. The present qualitative study has used in-depth interviews with fifteen
successful women entrepreneurs in Dubai followed by an interpretive approach to analyze the motivational factors
that enabled them to start business enterprises and the nature of business usually taken up by them.
The most significant finding is the way women identify their potential area of business and product to be marketed.
Most of them have focused on women and children related products such as eco-friendly baby products, kid’s gym,
vegan restaurants and so on, which according to them were not fully addressed in a proper way in the country. In a
rich country like UAE, quality of the product matters the most and once it is ensured marketing is easily facilitated.
While push factors are mostly documented as the key drivers behind women’s choices to become entrepreneurs, the
present study found more of pull factors like passion to do business and the favourable conditions offered by the
country to be the most important factors that motivated the women to start enterprises. UAE offers a promising business
landscape for women entrepreneurs to explore and flourish. The surge in female entrepreneur support groups and
increased funding for new businesses, have facilitated women entrepreneurship in the country. As elsewhere the
COVID 19 pandemic has a temporary setback on entrepreneurship in general wherein several of the enterprises had
to be shut down as part of the new normal but once the conditions change, a resurgence is expected with regard to
women entrepreneurship also.