<![CDATA[Women in Jorong Pasia Tiku, a coastal village in West Sumatra, run small enterprises but rarely try to grow them. This study asks why, and what that choice reveals about how Minangkabau women act within their gender relations and coastal livelihoods. Research on women’s entrepreneurship usually tracks income, growth, and digital adoption. Little of it examines how household roles and local social structures shape women’s economic decisions in coastal communities. Giddens’s structuration theory frames the analysis. A feminist qualitative design guided data collection through in-depth interviews, non-participant observation, and document analysis with 11 women micro-entrepreneurs and 4 observant informants. Women schedule their businesses around domestic responsibilities and value the income mainly for keeping the household stable. Trust, social networks, and mutual support keep the businesses running. Smartphones are common, yet women rarely use them for business, because they expect online trade to add work and upset the balance between home and enterprise. Through these choices, women reproduce the structures that constrain them while using those same structures to get by. Agency in this setting means keeping everyday life running, and programs that treat business growth as the goal will misread it.]]>
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