Assessing the Hindrances and Prospects of Women's Entrepreneurship Development: The Case of Hosaena Town, Hadya Zone, SNNP, Ethiopia
Women's entrepreneurship is considered to have a noteworthy part in economic development. The issue of women empowerment has been important for Governments and other non governmental organizations. Both primary and secondary data was collected. The result of the study indicates that women entrepreneurs are exposed to various obstacles in the area of economy such as: limited access to loan and finance, difficulties in accessing markets, the lack of own land and inheritance, and difficulties in accessing raw materials. The main difficulties identified by women entrepreneurs in the area of legal and administrative functions in the survey are: high interest rates, high taxes, difficulties in getting a loan, insufficient support from Governmental and Financial institutions, and the lack of possibility to influence policy making. In relation to social and cultural factors, results from the survey are ambiguous. The government should create gender neutral laws and policies to create a stimulating environment for potential women entrepreneurs. Therefore, government should offer different forms of support to women entrepreneurs such as: tax incentives and grants for starting a business. Additional effort should be directed to increase the quality of existing support to entrepreneurship development as well to designing new programs that would better alleviate the obstacles identified in this study.