Girlz'n the hood: discovering the determinants of social entrepreneurial intention of women in deprived urban areas

This article presents an exploratory study on the determinants of social entrepreneurial intention of women in deprived areas. A qualitative design is adopted to understand what conduce women to business creation. Six life stories of women met in the heart of the 'cité des Quatre-Mille', a deprived area next to Paris, in the city of La Courneuve are analysed. Those six entrepreneurs-to-be offer the opportunity to enrich the traditional push and pull factors of entrepreneurial intention. The economic dimension seems to be essential, as those women want to create their own job (push). According to the societal, territorial and social dimensions, it is more about a desire to improve their surroundings and to play a societal and territorial role (pull). It is therefore a challenge but above all a crystallisation of another way of considering entrepreneurship, which is seen as a way to change their everyday life and their immediate environment rather than to change the world.