Breaking Barriers: Scaffolding Social-Symbolic Work for Women’s Economic Empowerment

Abstract

This study advances the understanding of Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) in non-Western contexts by theorizing how social-symbolic work facilitates empowerment despite entrenched institutional and cultural constraints. Drawing on a qualitative study into the establishment of Kuwait’s first women’s business incubator, we explore how female intrapreneurs engaged in three interrelated forms of social-symbolic work – on selves, organizations, and institutions – to foster women’s entrepreneurship. These scaffolded efforts culminated in the creation of a new social-symbolic object: the Al Salam business incubator. This incubator functioned not only as a physical space for women to launch and grow businesses, but also as a potent symbol of institutional transformation within a culturally traditional environment. We propose a process model of scaffolding social-symbolic work, demonstrating how catalytic partnerships and dynamic interdependencies across multiple levels of social life can collectively dismantle systemic barriers to female entrepreneurship. By conceptualizing scaffolding as a temporal and integrative process, this study contributes to WEE scholarship and deepens theoretical insights into social-symbolic work by revealing how diverse forms of work interlock to shape new identities, practices, and institutional arrangements.