Masooma Habibi:
My family lived in a refugee camp in Iran when I was born. My father earned only little, so my mother, I and all my brothers and sisters wove carpets to survive. Our hands cracked and bled from the work.

When we returned to Afghanistan in 2008, I had hoped to study at university, but had to postpone my plans to help support my family. Yet, as a woman, I couldn’t get a job in the traditional community of Herat, where we settled. It wasn’t because of Islam – I am a Muslim – but because men look down upon women.

When all doors shut for me, Allah helped me.

From Herat, I went to Kabul and learned from people there of an international business-plan competition. The experience gave me self-confidence that many Afghan women, who are frequently ridiculed, lack.

I knew that no electrical power was a major issue in the country, so with my two brothers I started a firm providing consulting services in electrical engineering. It is called Check Up Company. Check Up provides consulting services to large customers, including international companies, and employs 22 people. We haven’t broken even yet, but eventually we want to be the Number 1 power company in Afghanistan and create more jobs.

At the beginning, we didn’t have money and were hampered by Afghani businessmen who didn’t want to work with me. But I have a strong will to achieve something better for myself, my community and my country. Today I am 23 and co-run Check Up with three male executives. I study international trade at the Dunya Institute of Higher Education. I run a nonprofit called My Hope, which aims to create jobs for 1,000 women in the provinces and help their children in the process.

My dream is to see fewer children with hands bleeding from weaving.

See also Habbibi’s profile.

Kenneth P. Morse:
Throughout the Middle East and South Asia, outstanding women such as Masooma see entrepreneurship as a great way forward.

Over the last five years, roughly 20 percent of the startup chief executives I have trained in Pakistan, Jordan, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia were women. By contrast, less than 1 percent of my trainees in the Netherlands were female. (My experience is that women In the Middle East are smarter, harder working, more focused and more effective than their peers in parts of the Western world.)

In Pakistan and the Pan-Arab region, the MIT enterprise forum’s business acceleration contest took off like a rocket because entrepreneurship is a message of hope for creating jobs and accelerating development. Entrepreneurs want to have the best possible people on their teams, so it is no surprise that all the finalist teams in each of the last three years have included women.

For entrepreneurs there is no glass ceiling. Although in some places, women can be hampered by prejudice, they will do well starting businesses in garages no matter where they are.

But they need more than a garage and money to get their businesses off the ground on a proper footing. Angel investor networks bring access to markets, management know-how and assistance in recruiting top-notch staff and customers.

In the developing world, the lack of technology infrastructure can be an impediment. The situation could improve if governments and large companies were more likely to buy from startups. It’s very helpful to develop an “ecosystem” that supports entrepreneurship by serving as a customer: Startups need customers more than funding.