Women Entrepreneurs: Reasons and Difficulties for Starting in Business

Abstract

Purpose: The aim of this research is to describe the main reasons and difficulties for women to establish businesses and to identify possible differences between those that go into industry and those that establish commerce or service businesses. Originality/gap/relevance/implications: The establishment of business is highly important for Entrepreneurship and its understanding is relevant to pinpoint the reasons and identify the difficulties that entrepreneurs have to establish their companies. Key methodological aspects: A quantitative study of 102 industry women entrepreneurs and 96 commerce/services entrepreneurs was carried out. Data were collected by a structured questionnaire and by two Likert scales, which measured reasons and difficulties in the establishment of companies. A cluster analysis was undertaken to identify possible groups of attributes related to reasons and difficulties in the establishment of enterprises to group variables. The Mann-Whitney test was employed to compare reasons and difficulties in the establishment of enterprises between the two groups (industry and commerce/service) to identify statistically significant differences. Summary of key results: Results by the Mann-Whitney test revealed that the two groups assigned the same level of importance to the reasons for business establishment: improvement difficulty in the previous job; desire to financially help offspring; re-entry into the labor market; earning lot of money. The same test showed no significant difference in importance level assigned to eight difficulties for the establishment of business: I did not believe in my own capacity; I had never had any link with other companies; I did not have any access to industry information; People did not believe in my potential; I was afraid to quit my job; I was never acquainted with a business plan; I had no money for advertising my business; I found it difficult to choose the location of the company. Key considerations/conclusions: Results show that women entrepreneurs are not a homogenous group and that there is a need for public policies that would minimize difficulties in the setting up of companies to increase women´s participation as entrepreneurs.

The influence of personal characteristics on entrepreneurial intentions: International comparison

“…Wilson, Marlino, and Kickul (2004), Adachi and Hisada (2017), Murnieks, Cardon, and Haynie (2020). Machado et al (2016) endeavour to find the main factors making life difficult for women who are starting their business in industry, commerce, and services. They conclude that women are not a homogeneous group and propose that if a country wants to increase the number of female entrepreneurs, it should provide women with help to resolve their difficulties.…”

Corruption and the business environment in Vietnam: Implications from an empirical study

“…Also, the mean scores of the overall business environments for both high group and low group are compared with examine the vector of differences (Machado et al, 2016). For example, respondents to corruption are grouped into two with one group consisting of 31 respondents that scored between one and four on a 6-point Likert scale for the severity of corruption (low-score group) whereas the other group consists of 25 respondents that scored either five or six (high-score group).…”

Rendimientos económicos de las mujeres mexicanas jefas de familia, como asalariadas y empresarias

“…1.2. Emprendimiento femenino, razones para emprender Guzmán y Rodríguez (2008), el Banco Internacional de Reconstrucción (BIRF, 2010), la Organización Internacional de Trabajo (OIT, 2015), Machado et al (2016), Mejía et al (2020), Pangui (2018) y Saavedra y Camarena (2020) coinciden en señalar que las mujeres emprenden por la necesidad de tener un empleo remunerado y por las barreras impuestas por los techos de cristal 4 (motivos extrínsecos), la aspiración de alcanzar logros, autorrealizarse e independizarse (motivos intrínsecos), la esperanza de encontrar un equilibrio entre sus actividades económicas y el cuidado de su familia (motivos trascendentales), la insuficiencia de ingresos económicos o la consecución del total de ingresos necesarios para asumir todos los gastos familiares (motivos económicos); se caracterizan por que no cuentan con formación empresarial o esta es mínima y lo mismo sucede con la experiencia laboral, y limitadamente han ocupado puestos directivos. Siguen la tendencia de administrar sus negocios desde su hogar, con lo que logran disminuir costos y riesgos, obteniendo la flexibilidad que requieren y buscan con el fin de compaginar sus actividades empresariales con las responsabilidades del hogar.…”

“…En Latinoamérica las mujeres buscan tener su propia empresa particularmente en periodos de crisis económica; emprenden principalmente como una solución para generar su propio empleo, como una estrategia para sobrevivir (De Vita et al, 2014;Heller, 2010). Otras emprenden para llevar a cabo una idea innovadora y también lo hacen buscando alcanzar un nicho específico en el mercado o por una oportunidad encontrada en él, así como por el deseo de ser independientes financieramente (Machado et al, 2016). Las mujeres profesionales que emprenden lo hacen por encontrar barreras que les impiden desarrollarse dentro las organizaciones (techo de cristal) y/o porque desean tener una vida productiva económicamente sin relegar el cuidado de su familia, estas empresarias se caracterizan por contar con un nivel de estudios más elevado en comparación con los empresarios varones (De Vita et al, 2014;Heller, 2010;Machado, et al 2016).…”