FACTORS AFFECTING THE PERFORMANCE OF WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS IN MICRO ...
FACTORS AFFECTING THE PERFORMANCE OF WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS IN MICRO ...
FACTORS AFFECTING THE PERFORMANCE OF WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS IN MICRO ...
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One can reach to the conclusion that women entrepreneurs in Dessie are not from a<br />
middle or upper class. This is because, had these entrepreneurs be from such a family,<br />
they would not have seen starting own business as a last resort. Similarly, the maximum<br />
educational level that these entrepreneurs reach is 8 th grades. This shows that the<br />
entrepreneurs run their business by common sense than supporting it with scientific<br />
principles. Regarding their age and experience, it is also possible to deduce that women<br />
entrepreneurs in MSEs in Dessie are in the age categories of 31-40 and join the business<br />
without adequate experiences. This implies women entrepreneurs in MSEs in Dessie<br />
town are youngsters and within the productive age that can contribute a lot for their<br />
performance. However, the fact that they are less experienced in their areas of work may<br />
negatively affect their performance.<br />
In relation to family size, even though Shane (1997) and ILO (2003) found that women<br />
entrepreneurs have an average larger family size, this study found that the majority<br />
women entrepreneurs have a family size of less than 3 which is even less than the average<br />
family size in Ethiopia that is 4.8(CSA, 1995).This is contradictory and needs further<br />
investigation.<br />
It is discussed above that women entrepreneurs are married, have no self employed<br />
mother/sister, have low educational background and are not experienced in business. All<br />
these can lead to the conclusion that, the personal characteristics of these entrepreneurs<br />
can contribute to their low performance in addition to the economic, social, and<br />
legal/administrative factors.<br />
UNECE (2004) reported that MSEs have a better employment opportunity than even that<br />
of larger ones. As this study shows, most women entrepreneurs in MSEs in Dessie are<br />
engaged in the production sector and employ more than 15 individuals within them.<br />
Hence, the finding matches with the report. Similarly, the entrepreneurs are organized<br />
under cooperatives and use micro finances as main sources of funding. This shows the<br />
production sector is increasing at an alarming rate and opens an opportunity of<br />
employment to a large number of individuals. Besides this, the openings of Micro<br />
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