Variables Influencing Women's Entrepreneurs: Facts From Ethiopia

¶ … women's entrepreneurs: Evidence from an East African Economy (Ethiopia)

It is an established fact that the Micro and Small Enterprise (MSE) sectors can help large parts of the populace in underdeveloped economies like Ethiopia as the means for livelihood. African women are beleaguered with societal and cultural challenges and overall entrepreneurial attributes, and that is reflected in the lack of their entrepreneurship development. This study hence takes up the issues ascribed to entrepreneurship orientation in African women and the factors affecting their business orientation. Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) levels of the African women were found to lie in the lower and mid levels assessed against businesswomen elsewhere. The EO of women is found to be positively related to multiple and often diversified business interests and ownerships amongst different socio-economic strata (Gelan & Wedajo 2013). This study is comprised of 203 entrepreneurs involved in 5 categories employing random, stratified sampling method. The questionnaire will be open ended and applied to analytics through Likert scales. The role of TAFE-delivered vocational education and training (TVETs) in shaping the entrepreneurship attitudes in women will be assessed through the questionnaire that seeks information about attitudes and aptitudes of women entrepreneurs and their businesses, parameters influencing the performance in MSEs owned by African women, supports MSEs acquire from TVETs and demographic profiling. In order to get better understanding of the phenomenon, the officials, and educators in MSE departments, and TVETs will also be interviewed. The data will be put through simple statistical analytics: tables and percentages, and standard and mean deviations (Wube 2010).