Muslim women entrepreneurship in Sri Lanka- a study of women-owned/led businesses in eastern region

Abstract

Entrepreneurship plays prominent role in economic as well as social contribution towards the national economies. Women Entrepreneurship has become a protuberant part in any country’s economy and government is viewing entrepreneurship the only solution of its increasing employment demand and upgrading living standards. Women entrepreneurs envisage many problems while operating their businesses. Lack of entrepreneurial qualities, 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. Government has been taking multiple steps to promote women entrepreneurship in Sri Lanka too by means of providing financial and non-financial supports. There are government and non-governmental business development support service agencies are taking much effort to motivate women entrepreneurship since its necessity has been felt. But, still it is a question where the so called women have been empowered in proper way to nation’s development. Though the Eastern Region in Sri Lanka consists of majority population as Muslim than Tamil and Sinhalese, the participation of Muslim women is relatively low as compared with other religious group. A number of research directions and questions are posed as a way of extending the knowledge in this area. This paper aims to identify the difference in entrepreneurial development by ethnicity wise since Sri Lanka has multi religious and multi ethnicity group in the society. For this purpose, women owned/ led businesses in Eastern region were focused. This was a descriptive study using semi-structured questionnaire and face-to-face interviews with 230 women entrepreneurs using simple random sampling technique. Findings suggest that, there is a significant difference between the ethnicity group – Muslims and non-Muslim (Tamils, and Sinhalese) with the mean business existence. It was also found that, there is an association between the ethnicity group and the intention to grow the business further. Muslim women entrepreneurs have relatively low mean in business existence rather than the other two ethnicity group such as Tamils and Sinhalese entrepreneurs. Islam also clearly support trade and commerce including women entrepreneurship through Al Quran (The Holy Book of Muslim). But Muslim women have lack of participation in the business sector since they face unique challenges. Eastern region in Sri Lana has the majority of Muslim compared to other regions in Sri Lanka, and there is a great potential for Muslim women entrepreneurship. Thus, their role is being recognized and steps might have been taken to empower and promote Muslim women entrepreneurship which would lead to regional as well as national development in Sri Lanka. This study lapse the reasons why Muslim women entrepreneurs have lack of participation in the entrepreneurial development. Further studies might address this gap and find the factors behind the success of Muslim women entrepreneurship in Sri Lanka as well in all over the countries in order to promote Muslim women entrepreneurship.