Women entrepreneurship and open market systems in agri-food businesses in Thyolo and Chiradzulu, Malawi

1 Introduction

Women's entrepreneurship is widely recognized as a key pathway for inclusive growth in sub-Saharan Africa's agri-food systems, where women dominate production, processing, and informal trade. Yet their enterprises remain largely small, informal, and survival-oriented due to persistent barriers in access to finance, productive assets, market information, and decision-making spaces. In Malawi, this pattern is particularly evident: although women are highly active in local agricultural markets, they remain under-represented in higher-value segments of commodity chains, limiting their potential contribution to agri-food system transformation (David, 2021).

Existing studies increasingly emphasize institutional constraints and gender norms shaping women's economic participation, but far less attention has been given to how open market systems themselves structure entrepreneurial opportunities and outcomes (Stefenon and Gimenez, 2023). These locally embedded trading spaces are central to rural livelihoods, yet they operate with weak institutional support, informal governance, and gendered power relations that may simultaneously enable entry while constraining business growth (Brush, Edelman, and Manolova, 2019). Empirical evidence linking market system functioning to women's enterprise trajectories in such contexts remains limited.

This study addresses this gap by examining how open-market systems influence women's access to capital, skills, and collective enterprise opportunities in Thyolo and Chiradzulu districts of southern Malawi. Using survey data from 360 women entrepreneurs alongside interviews and field observations, the paper connects micro-level entrepreneurial practices to the institutional dynamics of local markets. Through this lens and drawing on engagement structures linked to the Malawi University of Science and Technology; the study contributes evidence to debates on gender-responsive market development and highlights how strengthening inclusive market systems can support transitions from survivalist trading toward growth-oriented agri-food enterprises.

1.1 Context and rationale

Across sub-Saharan Africa, women form the backbone of agricultural production and food marketing systems, contributing an estimated 60%–80% of food output while dominating post-harvest handling, processing, and retail trade (Palacios-Lopez, Christiaensen, and Kilic, 2017). Despite this central role, women's enterprises remain disproportionately small, informal, and less profitable than those operated by men due to persistent structural constraints in access to land, finance, technology, and productive resources (World Bank and ONE Campaign, 2014). These economic barriers are reinforced by socio-cultural norms that shape household responsibilities, mobility, and decision-making authority, thereby limiting women's capacity to scale agri-food enterprises or participate in higher-value market segments.

Malawi reflects these continental dynamics. Women constitute most of the agricultural workforce and dominate the informal food economy as traders, processors, and vendors (World Bank, 2021), yet most enterprises remain necessity-driven and concentrated in low-return activities within open markets. In Thyolo and Chiradzulu districts, where women own a substantial share of micro-enterprises linked to crop sales and petty trade (TIPDeP, 2024), entrepreneurial activity sustains livelihoods but rarely translates into formalization or value addition. These patterns point to systemic gaps in finance, skills development, and institutional support (UN Women, 2013), with broader implications for inclusive growth, food security, and gender equality (Wang, Ding, Gao, and Fan, 2022). The presence of the Malawi University of Science and Technology in the study area further underscores the relevance of generating locally grounded evidence on how market structures shape women's entrepreneurial trajectories and inform gender-responsive agri-food policy.

1.2 Problem statement

Despite women's extensive participation in sub-Saharan Africa's agri-food systems, their entrepreneurial activities remain concentrated in low-value, informal, and subsistence-oriented market segments. While women dominate food production and informal trade, they seldom transition into value addition, enterprise formalization, or higher-income agribusiness growth (Njiraini, Ngigi, and Evelyn, 2018). This persistent gap between participation and progression reflects entrenched structural constraints. Women's enterprises remain chronically undercapitalized, relying largely on personal savings or informal finance mechanisms (OECD/GWEP, 2025), while formal financial institutions often exclude them due to collateral requirements, limited credit histories, and gendered risk perceptions (Oluoch and Alhassan, 2025). Limited access to training, technology, and market information further restricts enterprise upgrading (Singh and Dash, 2021), and socio-cultural expectations linking women's economic roles to domestic responsibilities continue to constrain mobility, time allocation, and decision-making authority (Singh and Dash, 2021).

These constraints are particularly visible in Malawi within open market systems, which serve as the principal trading spaces for women entrepreneurs (Phiri and Rantšo, 2023). Although policy frameworks and development programmes promote women's empowerment in agriculture, they often fail to address how financial exclusion, institutional gaps, and informal market dynamics interact to shape enterprise trajectories. Evidence suggests that women possess latent entrepreneurial capacity and willingness to engage in collective enterprises or adopt new skills, yet systemic barriers continue to limit progression beyond survivalist trading (Brush, Edelman, and Manolova, 2019; Bullough, Guelich, and Manolova, 2022; Oluoch and Alhassan, 2025). This study therefore investigates how open market systems structure women's opportunities for enterprise growth, with the aim of informing gender-responsive interventions that support inclusive and resilient agri-food system development.

1.3 Study objectives and research questions

This study aims to examine how open market systems influence the opportunities, constraints, and growth trajectories of women entrepreneurs in agri-food businesses in Thyolo and Chiradzulu Districts of Malawi. Specifically, the study seeks to analyze the demographic and enterprise characteristics of women operating within open market systems; to examine how institutional, financial, and socio-cultural factors shape their participation, agency, and business performance; and to explore the adaptive strategies and aspirations that underpin their transition from survivalist to growth-oriented entrepreneurship. Through this analysis, the paper also identifies actionable policy and programmatic pathways for enhancing inclusive and resilient market systems that support women's entrepreneurship. Guided by these objectives, the study is framed around three central research questions: (i) how do open market systems shape the entrepreneurial opportunities and growth potential of women operating in agri-food businesses in Thyolo and Chiradzulu? (ii) What structural, financial, and socio-cultural barriers constrain women's transition from survivalist trading to sustainable enterprise growth? and (iii) in what ways can gender-responsive financing, capacity building, and collective enterprise models strengthen women's agency and resilience within open market systems?

1.4 Contribution to literature

This study contributes to the literature on women's entrepreneurship and agri-food systems by shifting analytical attention from formal value chains and policy-led entrepreneurship programmes to the informal market systems where most rural women operate. While existing scholarship documents women's exclusion from finance, assets, and higher-value markets, it provides limited empirical insight into how everyday interactions within open markets shape enterprise trajectories. The study focuses on these spaces as institutional environments rather than residual informal sectors, it adds evidence on how market organization, governance practices, and social relations influence women's capacity to move beyond subsistence entrepreneurship.

The paper further contributes by linking gendered entrepreneurship analysis with market systems thinking, showing how informality can simultaneously enable entry while constraining growth. Using original mixed-methods evidence from Thyolo and Chiradzulu District in Malawi, the study demonstrates how financial practices, collective organization, and institutional support structures interact to shape women's enterprise outcomes. The study advances current debates by providing grounded evidence on the conditions under which informal market participation can support, rather than limit, women's transition toward more sustainable and growth-oriented agri-food enterprises.

2 Theoretical and empirical literature review

Contemporary gendered entrepreneurship frameworks increasingly emphasize that enterprise development is shaped not only by individual motivation but also by institutional environments, social norms, and market structures. Approaches such as the Gendered Ecosystem framework (Hagenauer and Zipko, 2024) and the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) (Malapit et al., 2021) highlight how access to resources, legitimacy, and collective support systems influence women's entrepreneurial agency (Quisumbing et al., 2023). Within agri-food systems, women remain concentrated in lower-value activities such as primary production, retailing, and food vending, with limited entry into higher-value processing or distribution segments (FAO, 2023). Evidence from Malawi, Kenya, and Ghana shows that financial exclusion, skills gaps, and socio-cultural constraints continue to limit women's market participation, even as digital trade, collective marketing, and microfinance innovations create new opportunities (Aterido, Beck, and Iacovone, 2013; Chirwa, 2008).

Despite these advances, limited attention has been paid to how open market systems, the informal and socially embedded trading arenas where many women operate, shape entrepreneurial trajectories. Market systems theory (Springfield, 2015) conceptualizes markets as multi-actor environments governed by formal and informal institutions. Viewed through a gender lens, open markets function as hybrid spaces that provide accessible entry points into entrepreneurship while also exposing women to volatility, weak governance, and power imbalances. Building on this perspective, the present study examines how women navigate these constraints and opportunities, framing enterprise progression as shaped by three interlinked dimensions: access to financial and productive resources, institutional and social support structures, and adaptive capacity to market and climate-related shocks.

2.1 Conceptualizing women's entrepreneurship in informal agri-food systems

A central distinction in entrepreneurship research is between necessity (survivalist) and opportunity (growth-oriented) entrepreneurship. Necessity entrepreneurship refers to business activity undertaken primarily to secure income or cope with labour market exclusion, whereas opportunity entrepreneurship reflects ventures initiated to exploit market potential and expand returns (Kedir and Sapag, 2023). Evidence from low- and middle-income countries shows that women are disproportionately concentrated in necessity-driven enterprises due to constrained formal employment opportunities and limited social protection (Fuentelsaz, González, Maícas, and Montero, 2015). Within agri-food systems in sub-Saharan Africa, women tend to operate in small-scale, low-entry-cost segments such as trading and vending, where transactions are informal and productivity growth remains limited (FAO, 2011). Firm-level studies suggest that many such enterprises persist at low productivity levels due to market failures including financial exclusion, weak infrastructure, and institutional gaps (Hsieh and Klenow, 2009), while gendered norms related to time use, mobility, and asset ownership further constrain women's capacity to scale or formalize their businesses (Singh and Dash, 2021).

From this perspective, women's entrepreneurship in informal agri-food systems should be understood less as an individual choice between survival and growth and more as an outcome of structural opportunity conditions. Informality may offer flexibility, low start-up costs, and proximity to household responsibilities that make it economically rational for many women (Kedir and Sapag, 2023), yet it simultaneously limits access to finance, higher-value markets, and regulatory protections associated with enterprise expansion (La Porta and Shleifer, 2014). Gendered ecosystem approaches therefore stress that policies must differentiate between supporting livelihood security and enabling scalable enterprise development; interventions that ignore these distinctions risk misaligning with women's constraints and incentives (Brush, Greene, Balachandra, and Davis, 2019). In agri-food contexts, facilitating transitions toward opportunity entrepreneurship requires coordinated support in finance, skills and technology, and institutional reforms that reduce gendered barriers to ownership, safety, and market participation (Wang, Ding, Gao, and Fan, 2022). This study builds on this premise by treating necessity entrepreneurship not as a deficit but as a starting point for analyzing pathways toward more sustainable enterprise growth in open market systems (McKenzie and Woodruff, 2014).

2.2 Open market systems and gendered agency

Market systems theory frames markets as dynamic assemblies of actors, rules (formal and informal), supporting functions, and enabling environment factors that together determine how value is created and distributed (Springfield, 2015). When applied to rural agri-food contexts, this perspective shifts attention away from isolated firms or programmes toward the broader institutional architecture, market rules, local governance, service providers, information flows, and social norms that shape opportunities for participation and upgrade. Open market systems, local, largely informal trading arenas common across rural sub-Saharan Africa, are therefore best understood as hybrid institutions: they combine economic transactions with social relations, customary practices, and informal governance mechanisms (Davies, et al., 2022).

Viewed through a gender lens, these hybrid features matter because they structure women's agency in distinct ways. Gendered agency refers to women's capacity to make and act on economic choices within constraints posed by social norms, household bargaining, and institutional arrangements (Brush, Greene, Balachandra, and Davis, 2019). In open markets, informal rules (who trades where and when, who controls space and capital, accepted behaviors for women sellers) interact with formal structures (local councils, market associations, enforcement of market fees) to produce differentiated entry points and growth pathways for men and women. For example, the low entry costs and flexible timing of roadside vending can enable women with high care burdens to earn income; simultaneously, the absence of formal tenure, secure contracts, or recognized collateral in these markets limits women's ability to access loans, enter higher-value contracts, or invest in fixed assets necessary for scaling (Peimani and Kamalipour, 2022).

Gendered value-chain analysis complements this view by showing where women cluster in low-margin nodes (production, primary aggregation, retail) and how power asymmetries in higher-value nodes (processing, formal trading, export) limit upward mobility (FAO, 2023). Open market systems, then, are both enabling and constraining; they offer immediate livelihood opportunities and social networks (e.g., savings groups, reciprocal credit), but they can also reproduce exclusionary practices (e.g., informal taxation, sexual harassment, gatekeeping by powerful intermediaries) that curtail business formalization and diversification (Brush, Edelman, and Manolova, 2019). Crucially, the effectiveness of collective solutions, cooperatives, VSLAs, and market associations depends less on their existence and more on their governance, trust dynamics, and linkages to external support (training, finance, buyer networks) (Ksoll and Lilleør, 2016). Poor governance or trust deficits can mean that group membership deepens vulnerability rather than delivering economies of scale. This study, therefore, treats open market systems as gendered institutions whose enabling functions (market access, social capital, flexible work) and disabling functions (informality, governance deficits, limited asset security) jointly determine women's trajectories from survival to growth.

2.3 Barriers to women's enterprise growth

Despite women's extensive participation in sub-Saharan Africa's agri-food systems, their entrepreneurial activities remain concentrated in low-value, informal, and subsistence-oriented market segments. While women dominate food production and informal trade, they seldom transition into value addition, enterprise formalization, or higher-income agribusiness growth (Njiraini, Ngigi, and Evelyn, 2018). This persistent gap between participation and progression reflects entrenched structural constraints. Women's enterprises remain chronically undercapitalized, relying largely on personal savings or informal finance mechanisms (OECD/GWEP, 2025), while formal financial institutions often exclude them due to collateral requirements, limited credit histories, and gendered risk perceptions (Oluoch and Alhassan, 2025). Limited access to training, technology, and market information further restricts enterprise upgrading (Singh and Dash, 2021), and socio-cultural expectations linking women's economic roles to domestic responsibilities continue to constrain mobility, time allocation, and decision-making authority (Singh and Dash, 2021).

In Malawi, these constraints are particularly visible within open market systems, which serve as the principal trading spaces for women entrepreneurs (Phiri and Rantšo, 2023). In districts such as Thyolo and Chiradzulu, women's micro-enterprises sustain livelihoods but remain characterized by low diversification, weak governance structures, and vulnerability to shocks including climate risks and unsafe trading environments (UN Women, 2013). Although policy frameworks and development programmes promote women's empowerment in agriculture, they often fail to address how financial exclusion, institutional gaps, and informal market dynamics interact to shape enterprise trajectories (OECD, 2022). Evidence suggests that women possess latent entrepreneurial capacity and willingness to engage in collective enterprises or adopt new skills, yet systemic barriers continue to limit progression beyond survivalist trading (Brush, Edelman, and Manolova, 2019; Bullough, Guelich, and Manolova, 2022; Oluoch and Alhassan, 2025). This study therefore investigates how open market systems structure women's opportunities for enterprise growth, with the aim of informing gender-responsive interventions that support inclusive and resilient agri-food system development.

2.4 Integrating climate resilience and gendered enterprise growth

Climate variability has become a major cross-cutting constraint on women's enterprise development in agri-food systems across sub-Saharan Africa. Droughts, floods, and erratic rainfall affect raw material availability, food prices, and market stability (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2022), with direct implications for women operating small-scale processing, vending, and trading businesses. These disruptions often result in product losses, declining profits, and increased income insecurity (UN Women, 2013), reinforcing the fragility of enterprises already operating at low margins.

Women's vulnerability to climatic shocks is intensified by unequal access to adaptive resources (World Bank, 2020). Limited control over land, inputs, and technology restricts their capacity to diversify production or adopt climate-smart practices (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2022). At the same time, many women trade in poorly serviced open markets lacking storage, sanitation, and protective infrastructure, which increases exposure to flooding, heat stress, and post-harvest losses (FAO, 2019). Restricted access to insurance, savings, or formal credit further constrains recovery options, often forcing reliance on short-term coping strategies that undermine longer-term enterprise growth (Bernhardt, Field, Pande, and Rigol, 2019). In group-based enterprises, such pressures may also weaken financial cohesion and repayment capacity (Aterido, Beck, and Iacovone, 2013).

Recent work therefore frames climate resilience not only as technological adaptation but as the broader ability to anticipate, absorb, and recover from shocks while sustaining livelihoods (World Bank, 2022). Gender-responsive climate finance, localized early warning systems, and climate-smart enterprise training are increasingly identified as critical levers for strengthening women's economic resilience (UNDP, 2022). Expanding access to green technologies, including solar-powered processing equipment, improved storage, and water management solutions, can enhance productivity while reducing environmental risk exposure (Bullough, Guelich, and Manolova, 2022).

2.5 Analytical framework

2.5.1 Framing the study: institutional systems with embedded agency

This study adopts an institutional market-systems perspective to analyze women's entrepreneurship in informal agri-food markets. Rather than treating enterprise outcomes primarily as a function of individual traits, the framework views women's business trajectories as shaped by interactions between market structures, resource access, and social norms. Open markets are therefore conceptualized as institutional environments in which rules, relationships, and infrastructure jointly condition entrepreneurial possibilities. Within this setting, women's agency is recognized as important but structurally mediated, meaning that behavioural choices are shaped by financial access, institutional support, and gendered expectations rather than operating independently of them. This positioning responds to calls in gendered entrepreneurship research to move beyond individualistic explanations and examine how opportunity structures influence enterprise behavior. The framework therefore emphasizes how institutional conditions shape what women can do, while recognizing that they still make strategic decisions within those constraints.

2.5.2 Structural domains shaping enterprise trajectories

The analytical model centres on three interacting structural domains that influence women's movement from survivalist to growth-oriented entrepreneurship; (i) access to financial and productive resources, this includes credit availability, savings mechanisms, and input access, which determine women's capacity to invest, diversify, or scale operations, (ii) institutional and social support systems, this domain captures collective enterprises, market governance structures, training opportunities, and trust networks that affect coordination, bargaining power, and market access, and (iii) exposure and adaptive capacity to shocks, Climate variability, price volatility, and infrastructure constraints influence business stability and shape women's ability to sustain or expand enterprises over time.

2.5.3 Embedded behavioral channels (bounded scope)

While the study is not designed as a full behavioral entrepreneurship analysis, it recognizes that institutional conditions influence enterprise outcomes partly through behavioral channels. Three such mechanisms are conceptually acknowledged; (i) risk management and financing choices, influenced by resource constraints and market volatility, (ii) agency and autonomy in business decisions, shaped by household and market power relations, and (iii) trust and participation in collective arrangements, mediated by social norms and institutional reliability. These behavioral elements are therefore treated as embedded responses to structural conditions rather than independent explanatory variables. The empirical analysis focuses on observable institutional and resource dynamics, using behavioral dimensions primarily to interpret how women respond to opportunity constraints within open markets.

2.5.4 Analytical conceptual framework

Policies, formal regulations, social norms, informal rules, and networks together define the opportunity structure in which women operate. These elements influence what is considered legitimate, feasible, or risky in business practice, and they condition access to markets, finance, and partnerships. Rather than acting directly on firm outcomes, these system-level forces filter through a set of mediating domains that shape how women interpret opportunities and make strategic decisions.

At the center of the framework is the interaction between decision making, risk taking and innovation, business strategy choice, and autonomy. These elements form the inner entrepreneurial core, where agency is exercised but also constrained. A woman entrepreneur's willingness to experiment, diversify, or scale is tied to her degree of control over resources and decisions, as well as to her exposure to supportive or restrictive socio-cultural expectations. Resource access, the socio-cultural environment, and adaptive capacity operate as enabling or limiting conditions around this core. Together, they determine whether entrepreneurial action remains defensive and necessity-driven or becomes more strategic and opportunity-oriented.

The outcome pathway illustrates how these layered influences translate into differentiated enterprise trajectories. Some firms remain survivalist, focused on stability and income smoothing. Others move into a transitional space where experimentation, learning, and modest growth become visible. A smaller share progresses toward growth-oriented enterprises capable of accumulation and market expansion. The framework therefore treats transformation not as a linear progression but as a negotiated process shaped by institutional context, mediated agency, and evolving strategic choices. Figure 1 provides a view of the conceptual model.

3 Methodology

This study adopted a sequential explanatory mixed methods design to analyze women's entrepreneurship within open market systems in 2 districts in southern Malawi. Quantitative survey data were collected first to establish patterns in enterprise characteristics, constraints, and institutional access. This was followed by qualitative interviews and observations to explain the mechanisms behind these patterns, particularly governance dynamics, social norms, and adaptive strategies.

Integration occurred at both the analysis and interpretation stages. Quantitative findings informed the selection of qualitative themes, while qualitative insights were used to contextualize statistical relationships and refine the interpretation of results. This structured sequencing and integration strengthened conceptual validity by linking measurable enterprise outcomes with the institutional and socio-economic processes shaping them.

3.1 Study area and population

The research was conducted in Thyolo and Chiradzulu Districts in southern Malawi. These districts were purposively selected due to their high concentration of smallholder agricultural production, dense networks of periodic and permanent markets, and a strong presence of women engaged in agri-food trade. Together, they represent comparable yet distinct rural market systems that reflect broader patterns of women's informal entrepreneurship in southern Malawi. The proximity of the Malawi University of Science and Technology facilitated sustained engagement with district authorities, market committees, and trader associations during the study period, which supported the development of a reliable sampling frame.

The sampling frame was constructed using trader registers from market committees, district council records, and field verification exercises conducted prior to data collection. Women traders were first categorized into strata based on market type (district-level central markets, peri-urban markets, and rural periodic markets) and enterprise category (food vending, crop trading, agro-processing/value addition, and mixed agri-food enterprises). Within each stratum, respondents were selected through systematic random sampling using trader lists as the primary reference, supplemented by on-site enumeration where registers were incomplete. A total of 360 women entrepreneurs were successfully interviewed. Of the 392 eligible traders approached, 360 participated, yielding a response rate of 91.8 percent, which supports the representativeness of the sample across both districts and enterprise types. Refer to Figure 2 below for the study area.

3.2 Data collection

Data collection employed a combination of structured surveys, key informant interviews, and direct observations. The survey captured quantitative information on demographics, enterprise characteristics, financing patterns, and constraints. Key informant interviews were conducted with market leaders, local government officials, financial service providers, and cooperative representatives to contextualize institutional and governance dimensions of market systems. Field observations were used to assess market infrastructure, trading conditions, and gendered interactions.

3.3 Data analysis methods

Quantitative data were analyzed using R Statistical Software, employing a tiered strategy of descriptive and inferential statistics. To examine differences between youth and older entrepreneurs, Welch Two-Sample t-tests were utilized for continuous variables (such as sales and tenure), as they account for unequal variances between the two cohorts. One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was applied to determine if enterprise performance significantly varied across environmental constraint categories, while Pearson's Chi-square tests of independence were conducted to assess the association between age cohorts and qualitative categorical factors, such as group membership types.

The study further employed three primary econometric models to identify the determinants of enterprise success and financial inclusion; (i) Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) Regression, this served as the baseline model to estimate the impact of human capital, formalization, and constraints on weekly enterprise sales, (ii) Logit Regression Model, given the binary nature of financial access (1 = no credit, 0 = credit access), a Logit model was used to calculate the probability of credit exclusion, identifying how behavioral factors like fear and trust influence financial marginalization, and (iii) Tobit Regression Model, to ensure the robustness of the performance analysis, a Tobit model was applied to account for the non-negative distribution of sales data. This addressed potential left censoring at zero, providing more consistent estimates than standard OLS for enterprises at the lower end of the performance spectrum.

3.4 Analytical variables used

The correlation analysis examines the relationships among key variables capturing demographic characteristics, enterprise attributes, resource access, and capability indicators of women entrepreneurs. The variables included are age, business tenure (biz_tenure_num), household dependents (hh_deps), formalization score (formal_score), estimated sales (sales_est), estimated capital (capital_est), digital skills (skill_digital), financial management skills (skill_fin_mgmt), financial constraints (const_financial), and trust/fear dynamics (fear_trust).

3.5 Validity considerations: design, sampling, and measurement

To strengthen methodological transparency, the study explicitly considered issues of design, sampling, and measurement validity. First, the research employed a convergent mixed-methods design, in which quantitative survey data and qualitative interview and observational data were collected in parallel and integrated during analysis. This approach allowed statistical profiling of enterprise characteristics while also capturing institutional dynamics, lived experiences, and governance conditions within open market systems. Integration occurred through joint interpretation of findings, where qualitative evidence was used to contextualize and explain quantitative patterns.

Second, sampling validity was addressed through a structured stratified approach. The sampling frame was constructed from official market registers and trader listings provided by district councils and market committees. Strata were defined by market type and enterprise category to ensure representation of key agri-food activities. Respondents were randomly selected within each stratum using systematic selection procedures. The final sample of 360 respondents reflects proportional representation across strata, supporting the descriptive representativeness of findings for women operating within these market systems.

Third, measurement validity was ensured by designing the survey instrument to capture observable enterprise characteristics, financing patterns, constraints, and institutional interactions that directly align with the study's market-systems framing. While the conceptual model references behavioral dimensions such as agency and decision-making, these were operationalized indirectly through measurable indicators such as financing choices, group participation, and growth aspirations rather than psychological scales. This ensures that empirical claims remain grounded in observable enterprise behavior consistent with the study's institutional and market-systems focus.

4 Results

4.1 Variable correlation analysis

The analysis shows generally low to moderate correlations, suggesting that the variables capture distinct dimensions of women's entrepreneurial conditions rather than overlapping constructs. Moderate positive associations appear between estimated sales and capital, indicating that better-capitalized enterprises tend to report higher sales, while tenure and household dependents show mild relationships with resource indicators, reflecting how experience and household pressures may influence enterprise scale. Skill variables exhibit weak correlations with most structural indicators, implying that capability gaps operate somewhat independently of enterprise size or capital. The pattern supports the analytical approach of treating financial access, skills, institutional constraints, and demographic factors as complementary but distinct influences on enterprise outcomes, with no strong multicollinearity concerns for subsequent multivariate analysis. Figure 3 provides the pairwise correlation variables used in the study.

4.2 Statistical and econometric modelling

4.2.1 Socio-demographic analysis

The socio-demographic analysis reveals a clear structural divide between youth and older women entrepreneurs across almost all key metrics, except for land ownership. A Welch Two-Sample t-test confirms a highly significant age gap between the two cohorts (p < 0.001), with older entrepreneurs averaging 44.5 years compared to 27.1 years for the youth group. This maturity in age correlates with significantly higher domestic responsibilities; older women manage larger households (mean of 5.95 vs. 4.95 members, p < 0.001) and support a greater number of dependents (mean of 6.06 vs. 4.83, p < 0.001). These findings suggest that older entrepreneurs may be driven by higher subsistence pressures, yet they also possess greater household human capital, Table 1 provides the details.

Table 1. Comparative socio-demographic and enterprise profile by youth Status.

** Highly Significant / 1% level.

*** Very Highly Significant / 0.1% level.

4.2.2 Business performance analysis

From a business performance and resource perspective, older entrepreneurs demonstrate a significant advantage. They report substantially higher weekly sales, averaging 64,472 compared to the 38,311 earned by youth entrepreneurs a difference that is statistically significant (p = 0.0007). This performance gap is likely explained by the disparity in initial investment, as older women started their businesses with significantly more capital (mean of 80,972) than their younger counterparts (mean of 55,442, p = 0.011). Interestingly, this inequality does not extend to fixed asset ownership; land ownership rates showed no significant difference (p = 0.73), with both groups maintaining ownership levels between 41% and 43%. The data suggests that while land access is equitable, older entrepreneurs are significantly more “resourced” in terms of liquidity and experience, leading to superior enterprise outcomes. Figure 4 shows the age distribution.

Older women exhibit a significantly longer business tenure (Mean = 4.55 years) compared to youth (Mean = 2.83 years). This ‘experience dividend’ likely serves as a primary driver for the superior sales performance and capital accumulation noted in the older cohort, suggesting that younger entrepreneurs are not necessarily less capable, but are currently navigating the volatile early stages of enterprise establishment. The analysis reveals an overwhelming level of financial distress across the entire sample, with 98.4% of older entrepreneurs and 96.6% of youth identifying financial access as a primary business constraint. The Welch t-test (t = 0.985, p = 0.325) confirms that this burden is universal and does not significantly differ by the entrepreneur's age. Refer to Figure 5 for selected enterprise constraints.

4.2.3 Capacity gap analysis

Over 93% of both cohorts report a critical deficiency in financial management skills (p = 0.658), identifying this as a near-universal barrier to enterprise growth. “Digital divide” often assumed to favor younger generations is absent in this context; youth entrepreneurs reported a slightly higher, though statistically insignificant, gap in digital marketing skills (19.46%) compared to older women (16.85%).

The results debunk the common assumption of a generational digital divide; younger entrepreneurs reported a slightly higher need for digital marketing training (19.46%) than their older counterparts (16.85%), though this difference was not statistically significant (p = 0.541). The findings imply that the digital and financial marginalization of women entrepreneurs is a structural issue that transcends generational boundaries, necessitating broad-based rather than age-targeted capacity-building interventions. When 9 out of 10 women in your sample struggle with finances, it explains why growth is stagnant. Table 2 provides the comparative analysis results and Figure 6 represents the capacity gaps.

Table 2. Comparative analysis of capacity gaps.

4.2.4 Pearson’s Chi-squared

The results of the Pearson's Chi-squared test indicate no significant association between age cohort and social capital accumulation through group membership (chi2 = 2.23, p = 0.897). Contrary to the assumption that younger entrepreneurs might be more socially mobile or that older entrepreneurs might be more entrenched in traditional community groups, both cohorts exhibit nearly identical patterns of participation. This finding suggests that the drivers for joining business groups such as the need for informal credit or mutual support are universal survival strategies for women entrepreneurs in the region, operating independently of generational differences. Table 3 below shows results of the chi-squared.

Table 3. Chi-Square test of independence for group membership by youth Status.

4.2.5 OLS regression analysis

The OLS regression analysis identifies business formalization as the most significant driver of enterprise performance. For every one-unit increase in the formalization score, weekly sales increase by approximately MWK54,069 (p = 0.026), suggesting that businesses with formal records and registration significantly outperform informal ones. Age and Gender Constraints also show marginal significance (p < 0.10); specifically, each additional year of the entrepreneur's age is associated with a MWK677 unit increase in weekly sales, likely reflecting the “experience dividend” discussed in earlier sections. Table 4 shows the OLS regression results.

Table 4. OLS regression results, determinants of enterprise performance.

* Statistically Significant / 5% level.

4.2.6 Logit model results

The Logit model identifies psychological and social barriers, rather than demographic or structural ones, as the primary drivers of financial exclusion. The variable fear trust is highly significant (p < 0.001), with a positive coefficient of 0.986. This indicates that entrepreneurs who harbor a fear of debt or a lack of trust in financial institutions are significantly more likely to remain without credit access. Table 5 below shows the Logit model results.

Table 5. Logit regression results: predictors of financial exclusion.

*** Very Highly Significant / 0.1% level.

4.2.7 Tobit regression model

To account for the non-negative nature of enterprise sales and potential censoring at the zero-intercept, a Tobit regression model was employed. The results reinforce the findings of the OLS model, confirming that business formalization remains the most robust predictor of sales performance (z = 2.27, p = 0.023). Specifically, the Tobit estimate suggests that a unit increase in formalization is associated with a 55,020 unit increase in latent weekly sales. Age maintains its marginal significance (p = 0.063), verifying the experience dividend theory. The fact that the Tobit coefficients and significance levels closely mirror the OLS estimates indicates that the distribution of sales data while varied is not being overly skewed by zero-value censoring, lending high confidence to the overall performance analysis. Table 6 shows the Tobit results.

Table 6. Tobit regression results (censored at zero).

* Statistically Significant / 5% level.

** Highly Significant / 1% level.

4.3 Generalized result framework

4.3.1 Women entrepreneurs and enterprise conditions in local markets

The women entrepreneurs in Thyolo and Chiradzulu represent a largely low-income, economically active rural population engaged in informal agri-food markets. Most were between 25 and 49 years old, often married, and supporting relatively large households, reflecting the dual pressures of income generation and caregiving. Educational attainment was generally low, with most having only primary schooling, which shapes their engagement with financial systems, record-keeping, and regulatory processes. Despite these constraints, women demonstrated strong livelihood-driven entrepreneurial motivation, primarily centered on securing household food and income stability.

Their enterprises were predominantly micro-scale, informal, and necessity-driven, concentrated in trading fresh produce, prepared foods, and small-scale processing. Most operated as sole proprietors with minimal capital, limited diversification, and little or no record-keeping, while sales levels remained modest and highly seasonal. Business longevity was often short to medium term, reflecting market volatility, price instability, and competition within open markets. Nevertheless, many women expressed aspirations to expand through diversification, improved packaging, and more stable market access, suggesting latent growth potential constrained primarily by structural and institutional limitations.

4.3.2 Financing patterns and constraints

Women's enterprises were markedly undercapitalized, with most starting their businesses using very small amounts of personal savings and relying heavily on informal financing mechanisms. Formal credit access was extremely limited despite the presence of institutions such as the National Bank of Malawi, FDH Bank, Standard Bank, and NBS Bank, alongside microfinance providers including FINCA, VisionFund, and Pride Malawi. Instead, women predominantly depended on community-based savings and lending groups, which offered accessible but small and short-term loans primarily suited for working capital rather than business expansion. As a result, most enterprises remained at subsistence scale, with limited reinvestment capacity and strong exposure to income volatility.

Financial capability gaps further constrained growth prospects. Very few respondents had received business or financial management training, restricting their ability to budget, plan, or engage confidently with formal financial systems. Although mobile money platforms such as Airtel Money and TNM Mpamba were widely used for transactions, they functioned largely as payment channels rather than savings or credit instruments. Many women expressed interest in moderately sized loans that could support expansion, suggesting that accessible, gender-responsive financial products combined with capacity-building could unlock latent enterprise growth potential. Figure 7 shows the financing patterns.

4.3.3 Skills, training, and institutional support gaps

Skills development emerged as a major constraint on women's enterprise growth, with most respondents lacking exposure to formal training or structured business development programs. Only a small minority had participated in short courses, and these were often basic and irregular, limiting their usefulness for improving productivity, financial management, or market responsiveness. Women expressed clear demand for practical training, particularly in financial management, marketing, value addition, packaging, and digital literacy, indicating strong awareness that skills deficits constrain enterprise performance and expansion.

Institutional support for enterprise development was also limited and fragmented. Although agencies such as the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Ministry of Labour, and Technical, Entrepreneurial and Vocational Education and Training Authority operate within the districts, most women reported minimal engagement with these structures. As a result, learning occurs primarily through informal peer exchange within markets, a process that sustains basic operational knowledge but rarely enables innovation or scaling. The absence of coordinated training pathways, mentorship, and incubation support therefore reinforces a low-skill equilibrium that constrains women's transition toward more productive and growth-oriented enterprises. Figure 8 shows the capacity and skills gaps.

4.3.4 Group dynamics and collective enterprise participation

The study found that 45.6% of women entrepreneurs belonged to business groups, cooperatives, or Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLAs), with most participation concentrated in informal savings groups rather than structured business entities. Only about 1% of respondents were members of formally registered cooperatives or producer associations. For many women, these groups served primarily as accessible financial and social safety nets rather than vehicles for collective enterprise development. The main benefits reported were access to savings and credit (60.1%) and social support (22.8%), enabling women to pool resources, manage emergencies, and make incremental investments in their businesses. In some markets, groups also facilitated bulk purchasing and informal coordination among traders, helping reduce transaction costs and strengthen solidarity.

The potential of collective enterprise structures was constrained by weak governance, limited institutional linkages, and low trust among members. Nearly 47% of respondents cited leadership problems, lack of transparency, or financial mismanagement as barriers to effective participation. Interviews suggested these challenges stemmed from poor record-keeping, limited managerial capacity, and absence of formal accountability systems, often resulting in conflicts or reluctance to remain in groups. Furthermore, most groups operated in isolation with minimal connections to financial institutions, training providers, or trade support agencies. Consequently, their potential role in collective bargaining, joint marketing, and cooperative production remains largely unrealized, indicating that strengthening governance and institutional partnerships is essential for transforming women's groups into effective enterprise platforms. Table 7 shows the group dynamics and reasons for enterprise participation.

Table 7. Collective enterprise participation.

4.3.5 Systemic barriers affecting enterprise resilience

Women entrepreneurs operate within a set of overlapping structural constraints that shape both enterprise growth and resilience in open market systems. Climate variability emerged as a major challenge, disrupting production cycles, reducing raw material availability, and affecting sales stability. Many respondents reported that droughts, flooding, and irregular rainfall had led to declining product quality, reduced harvests, and occasional property losses, illustrating how environmental shocks directly translate into economic vulnerability for small-scale traders.

Gendered norms and market governance structures further limited women's participation and mobility. Respondents described unequal access to trading spaces, exclusion from decision-making bodies, and persistent cultural expectations linking women's economic roles to household responsibilities. At the same time, infrastructural deficiencies such as inadequate stalls, poor sanitation, limited water access, and unreliable electricity compounded operational difficulties. Together, these environmental, institutional, and socio-cultural constraints reinforce the fragility of women's enterprises and highlight the systemic conditions shaping entrepreneurship in local markets. Figure 9 shows other systematic barriers.

5 Discussion

5.1 Necessity-driven entrepreneurship and survivalism

The findings confirm the predominance of necessity-driven entrepreneurship among women in informal agri-food markets, consistent with insights from Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) and Global Value Chain (GVC) analyses. Women's enterprises were largely motivated by income security and household survival rather than strategic growth, reflected in the persistence of small, informal, and low-capital businesses. This pattern underscores how structural constraints, including limited access to finance, low educational attainment, and weak institutional support, confine women to lower-value market segments despite their high participation in local trading systems. From a Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) perspective, such participation does not necessarily translate into empowerment or productivity gains, illustrating the persistent gap between economic activity and upward mobility.

At the same time, the evidence highlights forms of adaptive agency within these constraints. Women's business decisions are shaped by household responsibilities, time poverty, and mobility limitations, reinforcing their concentration in low-value activities such as vending and small-scale crop trading. Yet many women respond to these conditions through informal networks, savings groups, and flexible trading arrangements that sustain livelihoods and mitigate risk. This suggests that participation in open markets reflects both structural marginalization and pragmatic resilience, where entrepreneurship functions as a survival strategy while also expressing localized forms of agency within unequal economic systems.

5.2 Open market systems and institutional voids

The findings show that open market systems simultaneously enable women's economic participation while reinforcing structural constraints that limit enterprise growth. These markets provide accessible entry points requiring minimal capital and offering flexible working conditions compatible with household responsibilities, thereby supporting income generation and partial economic independence. At the same time, they operate within pronounced institutional voids, including gaps in finance, regulation, and market information, which compel traders to rely heavily on informal arrangements to sustain their businesses (Sydow, Cannatelli, Giudici, and Molteni, 2022). Social networks, peer learning, and savings groups help mitigate these gaps, but they rarely substitute for the stability and scale offered by formal market institutions.

Weak governance, inadequate infrastructure, and gendered power relations within market structures expose women to exploitation, product losses, and limited influence over decision-making processes. These institutional deficits reinforce asymmetrical opportunities, allowing women to sustain livelihoods while restricting pathways to enterprise upgrading. The findings therefore suggest that transforming open markets into engines of inclusive growth requires addressing governance, infrastructure, and financial access simultaneously; without such reforms, these systems will continue to support survival while limiting women's transition toward more stable and growth-oriented enterprises.

5.3 Gendered agency and group trust deficits

The findings highlight how women's entrepreneurial agency is deeply embedded within social and cultural structures that both enable and constrain their participation in open market systems. Gendered agency, the capacity of women to make strategic life and business choices within constraining social norms (Brush, Greene, Balachandra, and Davis, 2019), is expressed in complex ways within these informal market contexts. While open markets offer women spaces to exercise autonomy and contribute to household welfare, their agency is often exercised within boundaries defined by patriarchal norms, weak group governance, and fluctuating social trust.

Cultural expectations continue to shape the contours of women's entrepreneurial participation. Most women traders operate in sectors traditionally perceived as extensions of domestic roles, such as food vending, vegetable sales, and household goods trading, reflecting persistent gender segmentation of markets. These gendered expectations constrain diversification and limit women's entry into higher-value, male-dominated enterprises such as grain aggregation or agricultural input supply (Aterido, Beck, and Iacovone, 2013). Women's mobility and time allocation are restricted by unpaid care work, reinforcing dependence on local, low-margin markets where proximity allows balancing household and economic responsibilities. Such constraints mirror broader African evidence that women's entrepreneurship remains conditioned by social reproduction roles and unequal access to productive resources (Bullough, Guelich, and Manolova, 2022).

Within collective enterprises, social capital plays a critical but double-edged role. On one hand, women's participation in savings groups and cooperatives demonstrates adaptive forms of solidarity and self-organization, enabling access to microcredit and informal insurance. On the other hand, the effectiveness of these networks is frequently undermined by trust deficits and weak governance. Nearly half of the respondents (47%) identified poor leadership, mismanagement of funds, or lack of transparency as major group-level challenges. Interviews revealed that internal disputes over loan repayments, contribution defaults, and unequal participation often erode cohesion, leading to group fragmentation.

The findings align with the argument that agency is relational rather than individual; it depends on the quality of social networks and the institutional arrangements governing collective action (Brush, Greene, Balachandra, and Davis, 2019). In contexts of weak formal institutions, social capital serves as a substitute for regulation, yet when trust erodes, informal groups lose their capacity to mobilize resources or influence market outcomes (Fafchamps and Minten, 2002).

5.4 Financial inclusion and realistic financing expectations

The results illustrate the missing-middle financing problem: women's enterprises are too small and informal to attract conventional bank lending yet require sums larger than typical microloans to move beyond survivalist operations. Most respondents began with very small capital, 70.7% started with less than MWK 50,000, and rely overwhelmingly on personal savings (71.8%). Only 2.3% accessed bank credit, while 72.9% reported weekly revenues under MWK50,000, confirming limited cash flows and constrained repayment capacity. Despite these limits, women stated financing needs are realistic and aspirational: the majority identified an ideal loan size of MWK100,000–1,000,000, a range that sits squarely in the “missing middle” between microcredit and conventional SME finance.

This alignment between expressed demand and the missing-middle concept has two important implications. First, financial products targeted at women in open market systems must be sized, timed, and underwritten differently from standard microcredit: loan amounts should permit investment in value-adding activities (packaging, small equipment, storage) while repayment schedules must reflect seasonal cash flows typical of agri-food trading. Second, product design needs to address non-financial barriers that constrain creditworthiness, poor record-keeping (only a minority keep basic accounts), lack of collateral, and low financial literacy, through bundled offers combining small-to-mid-sized loans with business training, simplified documentation, and group or peer-guarantee mechanisms.

From a policy and practitioner perspective, closing the missing-middle for women requires (i) risk-sharing or de-risking facilities from development partners to incentivize local banks and MFIs to lend in the MWK 100k–1 m band; (ii) tailored group-lending or quasi-collateral models that leverage existing VSLAs while improving governance and transparency; and (iii) coupling credit with practical financial management and market linkage support so that lending translates into higher productivity and repayment capacity. In short, the study shows that women's financing expectations are neither frivolous nor unrealistic; they point to a concrete product and support design space that, if addressed, could convert subsistence enterprises into viable, growth-oriented businesses.

5.5 Climate resilience and adaptive entrepreneurship

The findings show that women's enterprises in open market systems are increasingly shaped by climate variability and environmental stress, which directly disrupt production, supply chains, and business continuity. Over 64% of respondents reported losses linked to droughts, erratic rainfall, and flooding, including spoilage of perishables, reduced agricultural supply, and declining customer traffic during adverse weather. This pattern reflects wider evidence across sub-Saharan Africa that women concentrated in small-scale agri-food enterprises are disproportionately exposed to climate shocks due to reliance on natural-resource inputs and limited adaptive capacity (UN Women, 2013). Their vulnerability is both structural and systemic, as most operate in poorly serviced markets lacking storage, drainage, and protective infrastructure, while limited access to credit, insurance, and climate information further constrains their ability to absorb shocks illustrating a reinforcing climate–finance nexus of environmental and financial exclusion.

Despite these constraints, the study also identified forms of adaptive entrepreneurship, including diversification into less climate-sensitive commodities, adjustments in production timing, and collective rebuilding through savings groups. While these strategies demonstrate resilience, they remain largely reactive and insufficient for long-term enterprise sustainability amid intensifying climate risks (Mngumi, 2020). Strengthening women's climate resilience therefore requires shifting from coping to proactive adaptation through investments in climate-resilient market infrastructure, access to climate-smart technologies, and tailored climate finance and insurance, alongside embedding climate risk planning into enterprise training and cooperative systems (Singh and Dash, 2021). The results reaffirm that sustainable women's entrepreneurship in agri-food systems is inseparable from environmental stability, and that well-supported open markets can evolve into platforms for climate adaptation and resilient local food systems.

6 Conclusion and policy implications

This study demonstrates that women's entrepreneurship in open market systems is best understood not as static informality but as adaptive agency operating within institutional voids. The study links market systems analysis with necessity-opportunity entrepreneurship, the findings show that women's enterprises combine survival-driven motivations with incremental innovation, collective action, and pragmatic financial aspirations. This reinforces arguments that entrepreneurship in low-income contexts is shaped as much by institutional absence as by opportunity structures (Tarun Khanna and Krishna Palepu, 2010), while also supporting feminist economic perspectives that emphasize the embedded, socially mediated nature of women's economic participation (Candida Brush, Anne de Bruin, and Friederike Welter, 2018; Naila Kabeer, 1999). The results further highlight that open markets function as gendered ecosystems that simultaneously enable income generation and reproduce structural inequalities, while climate variability introduces an additional layer of vulnerability shaping enterprise trajectories.

6.1 Building gender-responsive market systems

Government policy should move beyond treating open markets as informal residual spaces and instead recognize them as foundational components of local economic systems and food distribution networks. At the national level, this requires integrating market upgrading into industrialization, SME, and climate adaptation strategies, with explicit provisions for gender-responsive infrastructure such as safe trading shelters, storage facilities, sanitation, and drainage systems. At the district level, councils should strengthen transparent allocation of trading spaces, support inclusive market committees with gender-balanced representation, and formalize linkages between markets, extension services, and local enterprise development programs.

6.2 Bridging the missing middle (financing) for women entrepreneurs

Banks, MFIs, and fintech providers should develop tailored financial products that bridge the gap between microcredit and SME financing. The study indicates strong demand for loans in the range of MWK100,000-MWK1,000,000, accompanied by flexible repayment structures aligned with seasonal trading cycles. Financial institutions should therefore shift from collateral-based lending toward cash-flow-informed models supported by digital transaction histories, group guarantees, or hybrid savings-credit schemes. Partnerships with VSLAs and market associations could provide low-risk entry points for formal finance while expanding women's financial inclusion. Integrating micro-insurance and climate-risk products into these financial services would further strengthen enterprise resilience and protect livelihoods from environmental shocks.

6.3 From training to market-system innovation

Universities and training institutions, including the Malawi University of Science and Technology and other providers, should reposition entrepreneurship support from short-term training toward sustained market-system engagement. This includes developing modular training programs focused on financial management, value addition, marketing, and climate adaptation, while embedding experiential learning approaches such as market clinics, cooperative incubation, and digital business support platforms. Universities can also play a critical role as intermediaries linking research, policy, and practice by supporting local councils with data systems, evaluating market upgrading interventions, and piloting gender-responsive enterprise models.

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Footnotes

Edited by: Eliaza Mkuna, Mzumbe University, Tanzania

Reviewed by: Gandhi Pawitan, Parahyangan Catholic University, Indonesia

Tomo Kawane, Hiroshima University, Japan