This study explores the motivations and constraints of Iranian women entrepreneurs within a restrictive socioeconomic and cultural landscape. It adopts a qualitative approach and utilizes semi-structured interviews to investigate the complex interplay between financial limitations, gender biases, and regulatory challenges entrepreneurs face. These findings underscore the importance of resilience, adaptability, and creativity for entrepreneurial success. Women entrepreneurs in Iran adopt incremental growth strategies, utilize digital platforms for market access, and cultivate informal networks to manage risks and scale their ventures. They also creatively integrate family responsibilities into their business models, highlighting the cultural shaping of their entrepreneurial activities. The concept of regulatory adaptation was introduced to illustrate how entrepreneurs restructure their operations to comply with stringent government regulations while sustaining growth. The emotional burden of navigating these hurdles is also evident, emphasizing the need for support mechanisms that address mental health and well-being. Policy implications are discussed, and enhancements in financial access, gender equality, digital entrepreneurship, and mental health support for women entrepreneurs are recommended. This study contributes to the entrepreneurship theory by understanding how sociocultural contexts influence women’s entrepreneurial activities and resilience strategies.

This study conducts a bibliometric and altmetric analysis of women’s entrepreneurship, examining research trends, challenges, and contributions to sustainable development. By analyzing 6729 journal articles from the Web of Science (1975–2024), this study employs citation analysis, co-citation analysis, and co-word analysis, alongside altmetric indicators, to assess research impact. Visualization tools such as VOSViewer (version 16.20) were used to map the scholarly landscape. Key findings highlight critical themes, including gender disparities, financial barriers, socio-cultural challenges, and digital transformation, underscoring the crucial role of women entrepreneurs in achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This study identifies major research clusters, leading authors, and institutions that shape the field, while also revealing regional disparities in research output. The growing prevalence of open-access research has enhanced knowledge dissemination, yet access to financial and technological resources remains a challenge for women entrepreneurs. This study emphasizes the need for targeted policies to improve access to finance, digital tools, and entrepreneurial education, fostering an enabling ecosystem for women-led businesses. By integrating traditional bibliometric techniques with altmetrics, this research provides a comprehensive assessment of global trends in women’s entrepreneurship, offering valuable insights for academics, policymakers, and practitioners. It contributes to the literature on gender and entrepreneurship by identifying emerging themes and gaps, advocating for inclusive policies and enhanced support mechanisms to drive sustainable economic growth.

Lusophone African (LA) multinational enterprises (MNEs) are becoming a significant pan-African and global economic force regarding their international presence and influence. However, given the extreme poverty and lack of development in their home markets, many LA enterprises seeking to internationalize lack resources and legitimacy in international markets. Compared to higher income emerging markets, Lusophone enterprises in Africa face more significant challenges in their internationalization efforts. Concomitantly, conducting significant international business (IB) research in these markets to understand these MNEs internationalization strategies can be a very daunting task. The fast-growing rise of social media on the Internet, however, provides an opportunity for IB researchers to examine new phenomena in these markets in innovative ways. Unfortunately, for various reasons, qualitative researchers in IB have not fully embraced this opportunity. This article studies the use of social media in qualitative research in the field of IB. It offers an illustrative case based on qualitative research on internationalization modes of LAMNEs conducted by the authors in Angola and Mozambique using social media to identify and qualify the population sample, as well as interact with subjects and collect data. It discusses some of the challenges of using social media in those regions of Africa and suggests how scholars can design their studies to capitalize on social media and corresponding data as a tool for qualitative research. This article underscores the potential opportunities and challenges inherent in the use of social media in IB-oriented qualitative research, providing recommendations on how qualitative IB researchers can design their studies to capitalize on data generated by social media.