Women Turning Personal Experiences Into Ventures That Support and Empower Others

The research analysed interviews with 60 Israeli women founders, aged 18 to 70, conducted between September 2023 and January 2026.

A missing service, an experience of injustice, or a problem nobody seems willing to address can become the starting point for a venture that changes other women's lives. Research by Ligat Shalev explores what moves women from recognising these problems to creating organisations that respond to them.

The study, "From need to action: exploring the motivations of women entrepreneurs through the triple-driver framework of women's entrepreneurship," published in Frontiers in Psychology, examines women who founded ventures specifically serving other women. Their accounts reveal motivations rooted in personal experiences, relationships, abilities, and unmet needs, with personal ambitions often sharing space with a commitment to helping others.

Listening to the Women Behind the Ventures

The research analysed interviews with 60 Israeli women founders, aged 18 to 70, conducted between September 2023 and January 2026. Seventy women were originally interviewed; ten were excluded because they had not founded the initiatives they represented. Interviews lasted around an hour, giving participants room to describe their backgrounds and the experiences behind their work.

Their ventures covered health and mental health, employment, economic empowerment, education, violence and exploitation, political participation, and women's identity and culture. Health and mental health accounted for 45% of initiatives. Thirty-five per cent operated for profit, and the remaining 65% were nonprofits.

Two researchers independently examined the interviews, compared their interpretations, and discussed disagreements until they reached consensus. They used an existing framework of entrepreneurial motivation as a starting point and expanded it to reflect the women's accounts.

The resulting Triple-Driver Framework of Women's Entrepreneurship groups motivations into three areas: personal drivers, relational drivers, and ecosystem drivers, meaning influences from the wider environment. These categories overlap, allowing one founder's story to include several motivations.

Personal Experience Can Become a Reason to Act

Forty-four of the 60 founders described lived experience or sustained passion for an issue as a motivation for starting their venture. Some had experienced the difficulties they wanted to address, including violence; others felt a strong commitment to women's wellbeing without having personally faced the same problem.

A sense of justice featured in 29 interviews, with women describing how unfair treatment or harmful social expectations pushed them to act. Starting an organisation gave them a practical way to challenge problems they found difficult to accept.

The founders' understanding of their own abilities mattered. Twenty-two mentioned empathy, attentiveness, or a desire to empower people, and 22 identified leadership, organisational management, or entrepreneurial skills. Determination and resilience appeared in 21 interviews; creativity, curiosity, innovation, and enthusiasm for learning appeared in another 21.

These qualities could help explain the decision to begin: recognising that they could connect with people, organise a response, or turn an idea into something workable gave participants a reason to use those abilities.

One participant mentioned balancing work and family, and three others described wanting control over their working lives. The framework captures both under autonomy. Educational background was rarely described as a motivation and was excluded from the revised model, a finding that does not establish whether education helped the ventures develop.

Relationships Matter, Including the Support Women Missed

Family members, friends, teachers, and mentors formed another part of the founders' stories. Three participants mentioned support from family and friends as a motivating influence, including encouragement to think independently and pursue their own decisions.

Forty women recalled a female role model from childhood or adolescence, but only two explicitly connected such figures with starting their ventures. Sixteen reported no significant figure, and two described the absence of the example they needed as part of their motivation to create something for others. The interviews contain a useful reminder that inspiration can come from an unmet need for guidance. Some founders wanted to offer women the confidence, independence, or support they felt had been missing in their own lives.

The role-model findings need careful interpretation because participants were asked about female figures from childhood or adolescence, without a direct question about whether those figures motivated their ventures. Social recognition, status, and building an identity did not emerge as primary reasons for launching these initiatives. The revised framework uses "relational drivers" to reflect the particular people and relationships participants described.

Missing Services Reveal Where Action Is Needed

Forty-four women said they started their initiatives after noticing missing services, resources, or opportunities for women. These gaps included overlooked health concerns, barriers to financial confidence, and limited help for women rebuilding their lives after violence. Their motivation came from problems linked to gender and culture, rather than cultural characteristics themselves.

Eight participants named educational programmes, nonprofits, or other institutions as sources of motivation. None mentioned government support as a reason for starting. Support may have been hard to find, difficult to access, or inadequate, or it may simply have played a smaller part in their memories.

Shalev suggests that accessible support and stronger networks among women entrepreneurs could help founders develop their work. Programmes could use the framework to consider women's personal experiences, relationships, and the needs surrounding their ventures.

The study involved 60 women in Israel recruited through contacts and referrals; 93% identified as Jewish and 7% as Arab. Their experiences cannot represent all women entrepreneurs or show differences between women and men. Some were recalling events from decades earlier, which could affect accuracy.