Abstract/Summary

The paper proposes a conceptual model to understand female entrepreneurial leadership through an exploration of the perceptions and experiences of women entrepreneurs within their leadership roles. The paper addresses an existing knowledge gap on entrepreneurial leadership by bringing together three key constructs of gender, leadership and entrepreneurship. We apply Stewart’s (1982) model of role Demands-Constraints-Choices (DCC) to women entrepreneurs in Kazakhstan in order to understand their perceptions of the demands, constraints and choices they experience within their leadership roles. The results of in-depth interviews with women entrepreneurs present deeper conceptualisation of their leadership enactment as a co-developing, co-constructed relational activity between leaders and others in their wider business environments and context.