This article explores the entrepreneurial motivations of women entrepreneurs in the United Arab Emirates. It analyses the impact of macro social forces and cultural values on the motivation for entrepreneurship and explores how post-materialism, legitimation and dissatisfaction theories may explain these motives. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with local women entrepreneurs and analyzed using an interpretive approach. The results illustrate how Emirati women entrepreneurs navigate the patriarchy of their society, socio-economic realities, and structural and attitudinal organisational barriers to construct and negotiate their entrepreneurial motivations. The findings also illustrate how the entrepreneurial motivations of Emirati women unfold in a complex interplay between pull and push motivational factors within the Arab patriarchal and Islamic contexts, thus lending credence to the post-materialism, legitimation, and dissatisfaction theories, which collectively help explain the entrepreneurial motives of women in this context.
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