The Improvement of Women’s Entrepreneurial Competence in Rural Tourism: An Action Learning Perspective

Rural tourism is especially appealing to women entrepreneurs. While managing rural tourism businesses requires complex abilities, rural women in most cases are impoverished and poorly educated and have scarce resources; this limits their opportunities to independently develop comprehensive abilities. Focusing on the case of a 10-year regional program aiming specifically to improve women’s entrepreneurship in China, this study examines the actual behaviors of women entrepreneurs and the outcomes of entrepreneurship improvement due to the developmental agency’s intervention. From the perspective of action learning, this study not only reveals the vital role of intellectual support, which complies with the nature of knowledge in tourism, but also proposes a theoretical framework describing the dynamic collaborative learning process between the development agency’s staff and entrepreneurs responding to the changing market. The collaborative action learning drives women entrepreneurs to overcome barriers in practice, improve entrepreneurship, and achieve independence.