Entrepreneurial development issues and challenges in Sri Lanka: a case study of women-owned businesses in Ampara district

Abstract

Women Entrepreneurship has become a prominent role in Sri Lankan Economy. Entrepreneurs & Entrepreneurship is the talk of town, everybody is discussing about entrepreneurship. Government has started new courses and modules in entrepreneurship education. So many training centers have been developed to nurture natural talent of entrepreneurs. Government is seeing entrepreneurship the only solution of its increasing employment demand and that‘s true. But, still it is a question where the so called women have been empowered in proper way to nation‘s development. A number of further research directions and questions are posed as a way of extending the knowledge in this area. So, this paper aims to identify the issues and challenges for women owned start-ups as well as on-going businesses in Ampara District. This was exploratory approach in semi-structured questionnaire and face-to-face interviews with 291 women owned entrepreneurs from manufacturing, retail, handicraft and other service sector using convenience sampling techniques from non-probability sampling method. Findings suggest that, entrepreneurship becomes crucial role in the development of economy. But, Women entrepreneurs envisage many problems while operating their businesses. Lack of entrepreneurial qualities such as self-confidence, risk taking ability, need for achievement, dual role to play at business and at home, lack of awareness of facilities provided by the business development services institutions, competition with large scale units, problems related to marketing, lack of access to finance and lack of access to technology are some of them. The role of women entrepreneurship is inevitable in any country. Now a day, women enter in almost all professions such as trade, industry, engineering, technology. They are willing to take up business and contribute to the nation‘s development. Thus, there role is being recognized and steps are being taken empower and promote female entrepreneurship.