Purpose

We seek to understand how informal entrepreneurship education and training (EET) processes support marginalised women in challenging institutional contexts into gainful participation in entrepreneurial activities, facilitating empowerment and emancipation.

Design/methodology/approach

The study employs an inductive qualitative approach drawing on in-depth individual interviews, a focus group and observation of how female informal EET educators facilitate hands-on EET to marginalised female entrepreneurs in Uganda.

Findings

We specify a range of novel complementary practices that informal EET educators undertake during the main instructional EET stage and present the wraparound purposive work, both pre-and-post the instructional stage, they enact to support female empowerment processes for their disadvantaged learners. We then propose a grounded model capturing practices enacted by EET practitioners that illuminates ways in which informal EET can contribute to processes of empowerment and emancipation.

Originality/value

Our contributions are twofold. First, we conceptualise EET educators as institutional entrepreneurs undertaking institutional work beyond core teaching. Second, we specify a range of novel complementary practices they undertake before, during and after the conventional instructional part. This illuminates how EET can contribute to processes of empowerment and emancipation. Drawing on data from a unique institutional context, we illuminate novel practices enacted by informal EET educators thereby extending both the pedagogy and the realm of entrepreneurship education with implications for grander empowerment and emancipatory outcomes beyond the development of entrepreneurial competencies.