A Systematic Review of Research on Women’s Home Businesses in Iran

Women’s home-based businesses play a significant role in increasing the rate of economic participation and employment, as well as economic and social growth and development. But, it seems that despite the growing importance of these jobs, this issue has not been seriously investigated by researchers. One of the important pillars in successful policymaking is educational and research institutions, which can be very effective in developing theoretical foundations and then formulating operational solutions by scientifically examining the problems. In this regard, the current research explores the academic context of women's home-based businesses in Iran by systematically reviewing 41 articles published over 2012-2022. The results show that in addition to the decrease in the publication of scientific documents in this field in recent years, the focus of most research has been on rural regions and societies. Furthermore, the use of quantitative research methods and questionnaire instruments has been the dominant approach in the articles whereas the qualitative method, which is a more suitable tool for theory development, has rarely been adopted by the articles. Based on the repetition of keywords in the articles calculated by the MaxQda software, the published articles are divided into six categories: factors and barriers affecting the development of home-based businesses, the economic and social effects of home-based businesses, the effect of home-based businesses on empowering women, the role and effects of technical, vocational, and entrepreneurship training, the growth model of small and home-based businesses, and government solutions and support. According to the results, the scientific centers are recommended to plan for increasing the number of articles and directing research toward fundamental, developmental, qualitative, and up-to-date subject matters.