The Social Entrepreneurship Kool-Aid?
This entry was written in response to the Research Blogging Assignment for Stanford's Fall 2008 Cultural Interfaces class. For more about this assignment, click here. You can leave a comment on this post by clicking on the "comment" link below.
These days, “social entrepreneurship” is one of many new buzzphrases entering our lives, especially for those of us living near Silicon Valley. Companies like Grameenphone and Kiva have been praised for the impact they’ve had in developing countries, one of which is Vietnam. This past week, I have been exploring both journal articles and books relevant to my study of Vietnamese women entrepreneurs. The question I’m trying to address is how these women, specifically impoverished women, are leveraging emerging technologies and/or social entrepreneurship companies to help themselves and their families. The books I’ve explored give an overview on women’s issues in Vietnam, but I’ve had less success finding articles and books that focus specifically on women entrepreneurs in Vietnam – the one gem I’ve found is a collection of interviews, “Voices of Vietnamese Women Entrepreneurs.” The focus is on existing entrepreneurs and their legal, financial and societal hurdles overcome thus far and that still remain. It will be an excellent primary source, but I am also looking for materials about how future entrepreneurs can be enabled.
While nobody denies the impact that microfinance institutions like Grameenbank and Kiva have made on individual entrepreneurs’ lives, I am interested in further potential of such companies making a difference, i.e. future challenges and possible solutions. I came upon a Cornell paper entitled “Micro-finance and the empowerment of women,” which revealed that there is actually some controversy regarding microfinance. The four main schools of thought, according to the paper, are:
-Those who stress positive results and believe in sustainable microfinance programs to empower women
-Those who see limitations in the current model but attributes these limitations to poor microfinance program design
-Those who see limitations in the current model but believe microfinance should be used as part of a larger strategy to empower women
-Those who see microfinance as a waste of resources
I’ve been trying to narrow the focus of my topic, and this paper provided me with a few thinking points:
-Are social entrepreneurial companies just the new craze? What are the chances of sustainability?
-How can it be employed with other programs and/or institutions?
-What are the negative impacts microfinance can have that people aren’t thinking about – e.g. loan repayment pressure?
-What factors cause some women to succeed under microfinance programs?
-Since the paper was written in the early 2000s, how may new and developing companies have supported/disproved its conclusion?
Though the paper addresses microfinance in relation to all developing countries, I need to hone in on a specific demographic for the scope of my investigation. Furthermore, both the interviews and this paper remind me that I must not look at Vietnamese women entrepreneurs as a single entity, but as people affected by circumstance – by their values, their values, and their government.
Comments
This stuff is really thought provoking and does pose the question of how much of an effect does microfinance really have on the lives of women who were able to succeed in that field. Just one thing...what exactly is microfinance. And what do companies like Grameenphone and Kiva actually do? I know this is suppossed to be a in-da-middle-of-the-report thing, but I think those 2 bits of info. would have helped establish my understanding abit better. Buy anyway, i like where you're going you seem to have a few ideas already in terms of what you want to write about. At the end of the blog you talked about looking at Vietnamese women in the context of their values and circumstances, what about discussing any conflicts that arise with them being entreprenuers and the tradition of a patriarchal society, if that's the case. Or you could use what I just said as a lens for why women are so effective in microfinance. Maybe they see it as the opportunity they've always wanted but was never offered. Like I said, it sounds like your making real progress in your paper and my suggestions were just thoughts I was throwing out there. Everything will work out as you do more research and sometimes the interviews you may have slated may give you and added perspective you never delved into deep enough.
Posted by: Osagie Igbeare | October 15, 2008 05:34 PM