Overcoming structural barriers: understanding the multi-dimensional barriers to women’s entrepreneurship in Somalia

The paper discusses structural obstacles that influence the entrepreneurship of women in Mogadishu, Somalia, which is concerned with gender stereotypes, financial access, education and managerial skills, and so on the legal and regulatory environment. A cross-sectional study of 156 female entrepreneurs disclosed that the most important factor of entrepreneurial success is access to finance, which comes next. Through lack of education and management skills, inbuilt gender stereotypes and legal and regulatory challenges. These obstacles are interconnected, and cycles of poor growth in them go on diminished sustainability, and limited income production. The paper has policy implications as well as the promotion of gender-sensitive financial products, streamlining the business registration procedures, and enacting legal changes to deal with institutional exclusion. Capacity-building initiatives, Skills and market can be developed with the help of mentorship programs, and specific digital inclusion strategies participation. There is also the need to promote gender-restrictive challenge through national awareness campaigns. Conventions that restrict economic agency of women. Policymakers, by dealing with these barriers, can address them. The economic potential of women can be unlocked by the development agencies and the financial institutions. Businesspersons, supporting inclusive and sustainable economic development in the delicate post conflict situation of Somalia. The paper has a contribution to the literature on entrepreneurship by advancing a multidimensional framework that offers a relationship between financial, education, cultural, and institutional constraints, which affect the entrepreneurship of women in weak post-conflict settings using Mogadishu as an example. The results contribute to the study of structural impediments in low-governance settings and provide a policy direction in promoting inclusive entrepreneurship in such post-conflict areas.