Quick Overview

Gender is a focal area of the global ‘Sustainable Development’ debate today. The global agenda of economic empowerment of women, originally considered in terms of employment and livelihood opportunities, has gained a central position in mainstream economic development strategies today. The basic labor market issues have been discussed with focus on gender. The various international orga-nizations look at it with focus on technology, trade and employment. ‘Gender and enterprise’, today, is a constituency in itself, by intention, or by merely chance. A review of the available key literature indicates that, policy implications, if discussed at all, are ‘vague, conservative, and centered on identifying skills gaps in women entrepreneurs that need to be “fixed”, thus isolating and individualizing any perceived problem’ (Foss, Henry, & Ahl, 2014).It indicates that, chance, rather than intention, clouds the global agenda today. This calls for radical reforms, from the point of view of making gender and enterprise a meaningful constituency, and to align it with the spirit of the ‘Sustainable Development’ agenda. The attempt in this paper is to review of the existing thinking and practice in the subject area, to identify critical gaps, and to offer some perspectives and a strategic direction.