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Abstract

This paper examines the lived, everyday experiences of women fashion entrepreneurs in Uzbekistan, addressing the question of how they build and navigate their businesses in a context where there are gendered expectations for women. Drawing on ten in-depth qualitative interviews and digital ethnography of Instagram performances, the paper explores how entrepreneurial practices are embedded within social relations and culturally specific gender expectations.

The findings show that women entrepreneurs encounter different formal and informal constraints, including unpredictable taxes and regulations, as well as gendered expectations in family and institutional settings. Considering Deniz Kandiyoti’s concept of patriarchal bargaining, the paper argues that entrepreneurial agency is not expressed through resistance but through strategic negotiation within patriarchal structures. Furthermore, it shows that entrepreneurship in Uzbekistan is relationally embedded, with social ties simultaneously functioning as constraints and enabling resources.

This paper contributes to debates on gender and women entrepreneurship in three different ways. First, it extends the concept of patriarchal bargaining beyond the household, showing how it operates as an entrepreneurial strategy through which women navigate formal and informal constraints and opportunities. Second, it shows that an entrepreneurial agency in Uzbekistan is not always individualistic, but it is about social relations and embeddedness within them. Thirdly, it offers a contextualized understanding of entrepreneurship in Central Asia, where different institutional dynamics co-produce entrepreneurial practices.