Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2020.106032

Collective entrepreneurship has been found to alleviate extreme poverty by helping poor in- dividuals integrate into their societies and overcome their multiple intertwined liabilities. We complement this line of inquiry by exploring the conditions under which group structures may instead reinforce economic and gendered poverty constraints. We conducted grounded-theoretical interviews with 104 women entrepreneurs operating in farming cooperatives and non-farm groups in war-torn South-West Cameroon. Analysing our data through a constitutive lens, we found that discipline, the extent to which rules determine and control individual behaviours, helps poor women overcome extreme economic constraints but prevents them from attaining prosperity and emancipation.