Dynamics encouraging women towards embracing entrepreneurship
Authors: Khan Mohammed Abdul Imran Abdul Aziz 
Published: October 2019

Purpose

Women entrepreneurship is the fundamental carter of economic development. This study aims to identify the dynamics that encourage entrepreneurial attitudes among women in MENA countries. More precisely, it required to scrutinize the role of the government, role models, the entrepreneurial training and women’s demographic characteristics in encouraging women to embrace entrepreneurship.

Design/methodology/approach

This study is based on primary data, where data were gathered from a sample of 300 women from MENA countries through a self-administered questionnaire and were subjected to one-way ANOVA tests. Different statistical tools were used to draw some valued conclusions from the gathered data. The study reveals that women entrepreneurs acknowledge the role played by the government, entrepreneurship training, role models and demographic variables in encouraging them to embrace entrepreneurship.

Findings

The government and the entrepreneurial training were found to be the greatest variables encouraging women to embrace entrepreneurship. Nevertheless, the low overall mean exhibited that most women do not believe that these bodies have played their role satisfactorily. Whereas the ANOVA results reveal that age and work experience were not important dynamics behind encouraging women to embrace entrepreneurship.

Research limitations/implications

Data were collected from a sample of 300 women entrepreneurs with a simple random sampling technique from the following MENA countries: Oman, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. It is too difficult to approach the women respondents and then collect data from them especially in MENA countries; hence the sample is small and limited.

Practical implications

However, such studies are still in the minority, and, with few exceptions, most have been published in the niche. The study finds imperative for policymakers to go beyond measures that aim to address the challenges that individual women entrepreneurs face and to study the institutional framework affecting women entrepreneurship in relationship to motivations and resources. Additional care is desired to compel the environment and context to eliminate barriers to women entrepreneurship at source. The government should play a significant role in encouraging women to embrace entrepreneurship, especially in times of economic slowdown. World-wide, women are under-represented among the population of entrepreneurs, and they tend to have different motivations and intentions. The first, and most obvious, implication highlights governments need to create special funds for unlocking the potential by enhancing their levels of entrepreneurship skills using the traditional instruments such as training. The government should come up with new and specific training programmes, providing support for growth-oriented women entrepreneurs with dedicated business incubator and business accelerator programmes.

Social implications

Entrepreneurs are strongly influenced by role models and social context. It is therefore important to promote women entrepreneurs as role models and ensure that the education system is gender-neutral and does not discourage women from going into different fields. Finally, more targeted actions can be taken to ensure that family policies, social policies and tax policies do not discriminate against entrepreneurship by women.

Originality/value

The author believes that only few entrepreneurship researchers are interested in feminist epistemology, disappointingly the more advanced understanding of feminism witnessed in sociology and the political science literature is not reflected in the field of entrepreneurship. Hence, there is a need for investigate the dynamics like government role, entrepreneurial training, role models and demographic characteristics, to have a fuller understanding of how they affect, to ensure a more accurate assessment of the outcomes for the development of women entrepreneurs in MENA countries. This study is an attempt to investigate the dynamics such as government role, entrepreneurial training, role models and demographic characteristics that encourage women to embrace entrepreneurship in MENA countries.