{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,19]],"date-time":"2026-02-19T07:10:35Z","timestamp":1771485035572,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":26,"publisher":"Emerald","content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":[],"abstract":"\n Purpose<\/jats:title>\n This study aims to explore the leadership development journeys of women entrepreneurs across South Asia, Africa and Latin America, focusing on how socio-cultural and financial constraints shape their leadership development, adaptive leadership strategies, business outcomes and community impact. It examines region-specific challenges and the relationships between leadership development trajectories, enterprise performance and broader social transformation.<\/jats:p>\n <\/jats:sec>\n \n Design\/methodology\/approach<\/jats:title>\n A qualitative, multi-case study design was employed, drawing on retrospective, in-depth interviews and thematic analysis to capture the temporal evolution of leadership development. The study examines women entrepreneurs across three distinct regions of the Global South, offering cross-regional insights into how socio-cultural and financial constraints shape adaptive leadership strategies and development pathways within diverse cultural and socio-economic contexts.<\/jats:p>\n <\/jats:sec>\n \n Findings<\/jats:title>\n The analysis highlights how gender, culture and contextual dynamics intersect to shape women's leadership development trajectories and practices. Women entrepreneurs adopt adaptive, relational and transformative leadership strategies to navigate socio-cultural and financial constraints, progressively strengthening their leadership over time. Leadership development at the individual level is closely interlinked with enterprise-level outcomes such as business sustainability and innovation and with community-level effects including role modeling, social inclusion and collective empowerment, underscoring the reciprocal relationship between entrepreneurial leadership capacity and community change. A contextual, multi-level model of women's entrepreneurial leadership development is proposed, linking constraints, development processes and impacts across the individual, enterprise and community spheres.<\/jats:p>\n <\/jats:sec>\n \n Originality\/value<\/jats:title>\n This research contributes to the scarce literature on women's entrepreneurial leadership development in the Global South by offering a contextualized, temporally informed understanding of how leadership evolves under socio-cultural and financial constraints. It advances scholarship beyond Western-centric leadership and entrepreneurship models by integrating critical perspectives on intersectionality, gendered institutions and post\/decolonial critiques of entrepreneurship to illuminate how power, context, and identity shape leadership development pathways. The study underscores the need for gender-responsive, regionally tailored leadership development programs that integrate mentorship, financial literacy, digital empowerment and inclusive networking. The insights have practical value for policymakers, support organizations and development practitioners seeking to promote sustainable women-led enterprises and advance inclusive economic development in emerging economies.<\/jats:p>\n <\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1108\/jmd-08-2025-0469","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,19]],"date-time":"2026-02-19T06:34:52Z","timestamp":1771482892000},"page":"1-19","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["From challenge to impact: women entrepreneurs' leadership development journeys in the global south"],"prefix":"10.1108","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-1245-4555","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Isabel","family":"Barbosa","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Research on Economics, Management and Information Technologies, REMIT, Portucalense University , ,","place":["Porto, 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