Women in Nigeria: Examining the Motivations for Engaging in Social Entrepreneurship.

This paper explored the motivation for women’s engagement in social entrepreneurship activities in Nigeria. The paper examines the extent to which three factors: gender, penchant for solving social problems, and economic/financial reasons influence the desire of women to engage in social entrepreneurship. The study found that women social entrepreneurs are motivated by the desire to solve a social problem in their community. A qualitative approach was employed to obtain secondary data from 6 successful women social entrepreneurs profiled in the Ashoka.com repository. Data were analyzed using content analysis. The findings drawn from the analysis were discussed within the purview of African feminist theory and the empirical works of other social researchers. The result showed that women social entrepreneurs are majorly motivated by the desire to solve a social problem (rather than make a profit), which either stems from personal experience or those around them. This study recommends that understanding the intrinsic motivation behind their actions can help social activists and feminist organizations support social entrepreneurs in their work. The paper further informs interventions that foster the design of social policies and programmes for successful women’s social entrepreneurship practice in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]