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Over the past 30 years there has been an increase in the number of women turning to self‐employment and business ownership. Middle Eastern women were no exception and increasingly are pursuing entrepreneurship and have become a phenomenon that requires in‐depth study and analysis. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on women entrepreneurs in terms of entrepreneurial activity rates, entrepreneurial orientations, demographics and their enterprise characteristics in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries.

The approach utilised is a combination of the literature pertinent to women's entrepreneurship in MENA with the findings of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor's research for 2008‐2009.

More women are turning into entrepreneurship in Middle East; however, their percentage is still low compared to their male counterparts.

One of the main limitations was the lack of literature discussing women entrepreneurship in the Middle Eastern context and reliable statistics.

This paper is one of few papers discussing and comparing women entrepreneurs in eight Middle Eastern countries, along with their enterprises.

Although there are over 55,000 social enterprises operating in Egypt, the social entrepreneurship field is still failing to create the desired social change. This paper aims to explore the challenges faced by the field with a special focus on government related challenges as well as offer a set of recommendations to the Egyptian government to enhance the field.

The research was carried out in two phases; reviewing the literature around the topic through a secondary research followed by an empirical research interviewing four social enterprises, the ministry of social solidarity and experts in the field of social entrepreneurship.

The paper arrived to several challenges and they were organized into three main themes: challenges related to policy-making and other legal aspects; challenges related to institutional and operational support; and challenges related to social, educational and cultural awareness of the field and its ecosystem. The paper also came up with a set of nine recommendations directed to the Egyptian Government.

The originality and value of this research is that it offers first hand viewpoints of the challenges facing the field of social entrepreneurship in Egypt as well as offer practical recommendations to the Egyptian Government to overcome them.

The paper aims to shed light on the factors that affect female entrepreneurship at the macro-environment level and motherhood in the Kingdom of Bahrain.

Drawing on the 5M model and an institutional approach, this paper uses a qualitative semi-structured in-depth interview approach with 44 female entrepreneurs.

The results uncover several findings highlighting the important influence of the macro-environment on female entrepreneurs in Bahrain, grouped under formal (complex regulations, double employment constraints and financial obligations) and informal (societal perceptions) institutions, as well as the nuanced role of motherhood factors.

The study addresses the motherhood aspect of female entrepreneurs comprising household, family, child/elderly care and societally perceived female duties. Therefore, it constitutes the primary building block in a more gender-aware approach to female entrepreneurship. Addressing societal perceived gender roles leads to a comprehensive perspective on the study of female entrepreneurs.