Most crucial factor influencing women entrepreneurship intentions in Iraq

Abstract

Historically, women have little access to traditional forms of business ventures. Thus, women's unfair status compared to men, particularly in the Middle East, prevents women from becoming successful entrepreneurs than females in Western countries. This study responds to the recent call of several scholars recommended examining the obstacles facing women entrepreneurs before beginning their business. Therefore, this study aims to determine how significant is the influence of financial support factor on women entrepreneurship's intention to start their business in a conflict country like Iraq. The data were collected from 366 women entrepreneurs in Iraq using the Web-Based Questionnaire (WBQ). Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS v22) was used to test the hypothesis. The regression analysis was used to determine the most significant factors influencing Iraqi women's entrepreneurship intention. The research study's findings revealed that financial support is a significant factor motivating women entrepreneurs in Iraq to establish their business in a country with long suffered armed conflict. Given the Middle East culture and environment's unique context, the study discusses how this important finding can support women entrepreneurs in Iraq. Several recommendations are proposed from this study; first, it is necessary to develop a supporting institutional structure in conjunction with the ministry of commerce and industry to discover business possibilities that meet the women’s requirements in all sectors of the economy. Secondly, the government needs to continuously collect reliable information about the actual number of women entrepreneurship who have started a business. This type of data collecting can determine the number of successful start-up businesses and their operational challenges.