Entrepreneurial learning, Vol. 3 No. 1, 2013.
Original scientific paper
The importance of female entrepeneurship
Kelly Ng-Lun
Natasha Shahbaz
Nuray Ozbay
Abstract
Women Entrepreneurship (WE) has been recognized as an important source of economic growth and as an effective method to achieve a democratic society based on women’s empowerment and gender equality values. It is imperative to provide jobs to more women to build an entrepreneurial society centered on gender equal opportunity. Female employment rate in Turkey is 26%, and female entrepreneurship is 6%, which are fairly below EU and OECD averages. Thus, entrepreneurship is effective in empowering women, actively and creatively while bringing positive transformation to a country’s economy and society. The main strength of WE is its transformative power over the economy and society as it brings job creation potential, new sectoral opportunities, innovation, creativity and diversity to the economic arena. Additionally, the power of women NGOs is very crucial to empower women entrepreneurs on many fronts. They should be utilized to empower women entrepreneurs on one hand, and change the society by breaking the male-dominant traditional family structures on the other. However, there are still barriers in front of WE in Turkey. Despite the fact that WE has a significant potential, the threats and opportunities in front of WE needs a comprehensive analysis to invest strategically on this potential. Based on the SWOT Analysis, the key policy recommendations, incorporate: credit schemes, better child-care facilities and the need for statistical data. All these would help to achieve the long-term goals of sustainability.
Keywords
Women Entrepreneurship; Socio-economic growth; Democratic society; Policy
Hrčak ID:
130295
URI
Publication date:
1.6.2013.
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