Afghan Women Battle Internal and External Hostility on their Path to Entrepreneurship

Afghan Women Battle Internal and External Hostility on their Path to Entrepreneurship

Women entrepreneurs face kidnapping, death threats and the constant fear of bombs when trying to open businesses in Afghanistan. Many women also lack a formal education after years of harsh Taliban rule that has kept them from taking formal roles in society.

These challenges and more have eroded Afghan women's confidence and fueled uncertainty about their ability to be independent as they endeavor to launch and grow successful businesses.

When 23-year-old Masooma Habibi first wanted to open a business in Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, she thought the only way it would be possible is if she had male business partners.

Yet when she was looking for such partners to turn her idea of starting an Internet installation company into reality, she found that nobody wanted to work with her because she was a woman. "I thought I cannot do it by myself, I have no experience and everyone I turned to for help refused," she says.

That lack of support made Habibi realize that if her dreams of starting a business were to come true, she would have to go it alone. "I have had to overcome community backlash towards a woman working in Afghan society. I was depressed after my initial partners left me alone with a business before it had even started because they did not want a woman partner," she says.

However, after Habibi was given the opportunity to join the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women program run by the Thunderbird School of Management in Glendale, Ariz., and the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul, her attitude slowly changed.

The 10-month training program in Kabul that graduated 54 students in early 2009 is one of several around the world working to improve business skills of women entrepreneurs. "I began to meet many women entrepreneurs with successful businesses who really encouraged me and overcame a lot of similar problems I was facing. I saw that they were helping make a difference in Afghan society," says Habibi.

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Lessons in Entrepreneurship and Wealth Building from the Developing World - Knowledge@Wharton

Lessons in Entrepreneurship and Wealth Building from the Developing World - Knowledge@Wharton

Animal feed in Zambia. Cookies in South Africa. Medical records systems in Botswana. Peanut processing in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.

In regions scarred by intractable poverty, innovative programs to build new sources of wealth through these four businesses are providing lessons for entrepreneurs hoping to create new markets and economic opportunity. In a paper titled, "Business Models: Creating New Markets and Societal Wealth", leaders of Wharton's Societal Wealth Program (WSWP) outline the critical elements of entrepreneurial wealth building based on nearly 10 years of field research supported by Wharton alumni.

The WSWP initiatives are designed to move beyond a charitable aid model for combating poverty by creating economic enterprises that lead to self-sufficiency rather than dependency and that will have a major and lasting impact. "There are plenty of charities doing things for free. What we are attempting to do is create poverty reducing businesses," says James D. Thompson, director of the WSWP, who coauthored the paper with Wharton management professor Ian C. MacMillan.

Uncertainty is a major element of any entrepreneurial undertaking and the social wealth projects -- with the goal of improving society in addition to making money -- are all the more unpredictable. "If you're going to do something that's really going to make a difference and it's bold and highly innovative, by definition it's [also] going to be highly uncertain," MacMillan notes.

Since its launch in 2001, WSWP has been involved in 10 projects and is in the early stages of evaluating two others. The four cases highlighted in the paper represent a range of outcomes from success to termination. Many of the other six projects were disengaged or significantly altered -- a rate Thompson says is comparable to findings on typical entrepreneurial startups. "You're likely, if you follow this approach, to encounter more failures than successes," he notes.

Lessons for Entrepreneurs

According to MacMillan, entrepreneurs working in social enterprises need to maintain a sense of responsibility in addition to factoring in the many business considerations that typically go into a start-up. Failure in this environment can be measured in costs to the human spirit as well as financial terms. "You don't just rush in and say you are going to help without thinking how you will actually be of help," he points out. "Secondly, if you find that your program is not working, you need to have preplanned how to exit without doing harm or leaving people in the lurch."

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