Journal of Hotel and Business Management
Open Access

Abstract

Women entrepreneurs in Egypt: a qualitative study of perceptions of challenges

Rwan Zakria Helmy

Although all entrepreneurs and business owners encounter obstacles and barriers, the challenges that female entrepreneurs face in Egypt are surmount. Female entrepreneurs in Egypt lack the requisite training and basic advising services that would keep them updated with new technological skills. Moreover, women are more likely to discontinue their businesses due to limited access to finance. Furthermore, women face restrictive legal and institutional burdens when establishing their business or when starting a new one. In addition, cultural constraints are another challenge that negatively influence women's creditability, their empowerment and self-confidence. The current study, intends to investigate the challenges that female entrepreneurs encounter, as business owners or start-up entrepreneurs in Egypt. The study contributes to the literature on women entrepreneurs by highlighting the challenges they face and presenting solutions that could help to promote their contribution in the economy. The results are based on semi-structured, face to face and phone interviews with seventeen female entrepreneurs from different business fields across different ages, ranging from 25 to 45 years old.

Some women in Egypt ventured and participated in the business field by involving themselves in SMEs business. However, they struggle to initiate and maintain any business on their own because of the many social, cultural, financial and political challenges they face in the Egyptian society. Women with small size enterprises face challenges in competing with large companies in the market, as they lack skills and have limited access to technology (MIDAS, 2009). Moreover, female entrepreneurs in Egypt face several challenges in initiating and maintaining their own business, within the male dominated societies, and the restricted social structure in Egypt. In addition, women entrepreneurs are in a less favorable position compared to men with regards to access to commercial credit from banks or any formal financial service providers (Jahed et. al., 2011). They struggle to find more lucrative markets aside from the traditional local markets. They lack access to the facilities and tools that qualify them for the lucrative market. These facilities include training, education for small enterprises, access to information and technology that could help them with establishing and/or growing their business.

A study should be conducted on the obstacles that females face. They face obstacles such as restricted policies and regulations from governmental institutions, lack of financial support, limited network relationships, culture and social pressures (Wendey & Choy, 2007; Al- Owaihan & Rao, 2010; Akhalwaya & Havenga, 2012). Therefore, this study argues that women entrepreneurs in Egypt face huge challenges in their fields.  In the backdrop, this paper aims to address the challenges and the barriers women entrepreneurs face in Egypt to be able to initiate and establish their business in Egypt, such as lack financial support, technology capacity, and culture constraints.

Published Date: 2020-11-25; Received Date: 2020-11-10