THE INFLUENCE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL WOMEN EMPOWERMENT ON MICRO ENTERPRISE SUSTAINABILITY

Abstract

Women’s contribution to the economic growth takes many forms including entrepreneurship. Existing literature suggest that women can play a significant role in the larger entrepreneurship landscape and economic development. Unfortunately, the level of women entrepreneurial success is still low. Most of women failed to sustain in entrepreneurship due to psychological characteristic issue for instance lack of empowerment among themselves. Consequently, many countries have been focusing on empowering women for the economic development and to relieve the plight of women living in poverty. Therefore, women empowerment emerges as one of the crucial issues in the entrepreneurship field especially among low income household. Increasing empowerment element among women is seen as one of the ways to improve entrepreneurial activity and increase the access for economic opportunity. Since the success of micro enterprise among women entrepreneur are still being debated among scholars, therefore the understanding on the concept of psychological women empowerment in depth is crucial. The limitation on the explanation concerning the concept of the psychological women empowerment on women entrepreneur requires for further investigation. Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate the role of psychological women empowerment that may assist in women entrepreneurial success. The study employed quantitative method and time horizon of the study covers three years starting from 2018. The total of 410 women entrepreneurs categorised as low income household who conducting micro enterprise in Malaysia participated in this study voluntarily. The data was analysed using descriptive and linear regression analysis. The finding obtained from this study indicated that there was significant positive relationship between psychological women empowerment and women entrepreneurial success. In addition, the findings showed that women had greater level of autonomy, independence and having control on their business. The findings offer evidence that women in low income household engaged in entrepreneurial activities feel much empowered that lead to business sustainability. This result provides valuable insight for agencies involved in women entrepreneurship development especially on micro enterprise.