Women's entrepreneurship in contexts of social vulnerability: between socioeconomic impacts and empowerment processes

Abstract

Female entrepreneurship has become an important strategy for economic inclusion and addressing gender inequalities, especially in territories marked by socioeconomic vulnerability. Objective: This article aims to analyze the articulation between socioeconomic impacts and empowerment processes in female entrepreneurship in contexts of social vulnerability. Through an integrative literature review, with a qualitative and descriptive approach, studies published between 2020 and 2026 in the Google Scholar and SciELO databases were analyzed, using thematic indexing and categorization for data synthesis. The findings indicate that female entrepreneurship in these contexts is mainly driven by necessity, generating immediate income and boosting local economies, but faces structural barriers such as informality (57% without a CNPJ in favelas), restricted access to credit (66% report difficulties), and the overload of the triple burden of work and family life. Simultaneously, the activity fosters multidimensional empowerment (economic, psychological, and social), although its transformative potential is limited by the absence of intersectoral policies and care infrastructure. This study contributes to the literature by critically integrating the material and subjective dimensions of female entrepreneurship, overcoming fragmented analyses and highlighting the need for intersectional approaches and structuring public policies. The articulation between socioeconomic impacts and empowerment is dialectical, but not linear. For entrepreneurship to transcend the logic of survival and consolidate itself as a vector of equity, the combination of access to credit, continuous training, assisted formalization, and the guarantee of social rights, especially the equitable division of care work, is indispensable.