Breaking Barriers: An Exploration of Women’s Entrepreneur in Malaysia

Abstract

Nowadays, women entrepreneurs has been perceived as an important role for the development of country. The significant contributions of women entrepreneurs is one of the key strategy for achieving growth and ingenuity in the real economy. In the contemporary society,women are not necessities to restrain to the typical practice of life as many have ventured into the business world and have been proven to be successful. From point of views, it is observed that approximately 20 per cent of the entire estimated registered population of over 650,000 entrepreneurs consists of women. The comprehensive trend shows rising total numbers of women being participated in economic endeavors. One of the reason the contribution of women in the entrepreneurship, they need to earn extra income to support their families, taking care their children and adjustable working hours enforced them to choose in entrepreneurship activities. Furthermore, this study will identify the barriers among women’s entrepreneurs in Malaysia and resolving them to explore various strategy of business programme opportunities. The problems encountered by female entrepreneurs were anticipated to arise from three distinct factors. There exist challenges pertaining to financial access, gender bias, and restricted networking opportunities. This exploratory study used the method qualitative and analyse the secondary data from various sources. The finding of this study are each of the obstacles faced by the women entrepreneur was supported pillar and government organization such as Ministry of Entrepreneurship and Cooperative Development, Tabung Ekonomi Kumpulan Usaha Niaga (TEKUN) and Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia (AiM) to enhance the women entrepreneurs performance in economics activities.