Project Report on Women Empowerment in Small Business Management

This project report delves into the critical topic of women's empowerment within the context of small business management. It begins with an introduction highlighting the increasing presence of female entrepreneurs and the importance of gender diversity in the market, emphasizing its positive impact on both organizations and society. A comprehensive literature review follows, exploring the evolving landscape of women in business, particularly in the Gulf region and Asia. The report analyzes the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs, such as limited access to financing and cultural barriers, while also acknowledging the progress made in gender equality. The critical analysis section presents findings from an interview with a female entrepreneur, shedding light on the practical difficulties encountered when starting and running a business. The report concludes with recommendations for fostering women's empowerment in the business world and promoting gender equality. The report includes a questionnaire in the appendix.

Running Head: Small Business Management
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Project Report: Small Business Management

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Contents
Introduction.......................................................................................................................3
Literature review...............................................................................................................3
Critical analysis................................................................................................................7
Conclusion and recommendation.....................................................................................9
References.......................................................................................................................10
Appendix.........................................................................................................................12

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Introduction:
In the current scenario, the market has been changed and the female entrepreneurs
have also come up in the market and the female representative ratio has been improved in the
society. Gender diversity is one of the major concerns and it is normally related to the human
talent and the economical resources of the business. However, tit has been found that the
gender diverse organizations impose positive effect on the organization as well as the society.
In terms of the empowerment, it is multi dimension process which helps the women to
achieve the control and power through managing the market, business and the individual
lives. However estimation of women empowerment is troublesome and it is trying to pass
judgment on nation level execution as there is trouble in social affair different information. In
view of the discoveries of, Women's Empowerment: Measuring Gender Gap, five imperative
measurements have been chosen for the examination over the empowerment of women.
Financial investment alludes to commitment of females to workforce in quantitative terms.
Monetary open door is identified with how many women are engaged with the economy, past
their negligible nearness as specialists (Bashir, 2013). This issue is amassed in created
nations where women access business effectively yet they have little odds of upward
versatility. Political strengthening implies that women have commitment in the basic
leadership and can impact approach making.
Literature review:
It has been found that the culture of gulf counties and Asia are not developed and still
it is quite difficult for women to work at a corporate. However, the current study of various
researchers on the women empowerment depicts that the changes are rapidly taking place in
the market. Al-Alawi, (2016) has added that setting up a fruitful business and working for
yourself is the fantasy profession for some, however a mix of development, vision,
association and believing your intuition is the thing that makes an effective business
visionary. Women in the gulf counties are driving enterprise into another time of
improvement as more approached to transform their thoughts into triumphant plans of action.
As per the UAE Ministry of Economy, women contribute about portion of the UAE's SME
area. The significance of a woman's job in the public arena, governmental issues, training,
and business has accumulated expanding acknowledgment lately.

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Superior to most, women business visionaries comprehend the difficulties the
contemporary female workforce confronts every day. In the Middle East, just 7.6 percent of
women are beginning time business visionaries contrasted with 11.8 percent of men. In spite
of the fact that there has been a steady increment in the quantity of women running
organizations, women business visionaries still face significant hindrances on their way to
progress (Alsebaie, 2015). Many, for instance, still battle to get to approach financing
alternatives as their male partners. Right up 'til the present time, most men expect around 10
percent higher salary than their female associates.
There has additionally been a revealed absence of instructing openings and systems,
with a minority of women in mentorship jobs in the advancement and enterprising space. It
will require investment to address this gender differentiation; in this way it remains a basic
test (Boehe and Cruz, 2013). That being stated, the UAE is making progress in this division
and is positioned as a pioneer in gender correspondence in the locale, as per the “World
Economic Forum's 2014 Global Gender Gap report”.
It has been found that the UAE is one of the most developing nation with a solid
economy in Asian market, so excelling in business can frequently be less demanding here
than somewhere else on the planet. There are numerous open doors accessible to youthful
ability with enterprising vision, and the SME scene has advanced to an express that makes
beginning your own business much more available (Findlow, 2013).
With collaborating spaces accessible over the emirates and access to both on the web
and in-person independent ability, entrepreneurs never again need to stress over the issue of
employing staff and leasing office space when they're not exactly in the monetary position to
do as such. The social advantages of developing women' standings in the workforce are not to
be underestimated (Bushati and Galvani, 2017). It has also been added that the struggle level
of the women is also not lower in the UAE market as the culture of the country does not
allow the women to come in the limelight and compete with the men.
The current report over the women empowerment has added that the women have
started working from home or a small level in order to become independent and manage their
expenses at their own level. The report on the gulf country has further added that the
empowerment of women have been improved nowadays. Bruckmüller, Ryan, Haslam and
Peters, (2013) has also argued in his study that the GCC are fast approaching gender equality

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in business, start up intention and possibly resulting in greater parity in the entrepreneurship’s
next wave.
High unemployment rate, limited access of the finances, social constraint, work life
balance striking, inadequate access and training to information, inadequate training, lack of
the female entrepreneurship policies etc are among the few reasons because of that the
women empowerment level is still lower in the country (Freshwater, 2012). It has been said
by few of female entrepreneurs in an interview that few efforts have been recently made by
the government in order to improve the level of women and some controls and power have
been given to the women entrepreneurs in the market to improve their lifestyle and work
balance.
Various challenges have been faced by women entrepreneur in the market because of
the political factors, cultures, masculinity etc. But along with the time, various positive
changes have been seen in the performance and the number of women empowerment. Eslen-
Ziya, (2013) has explained into the report that the women empowerment has been improved
by 32% in 2015 which is a great number and explains that the market has been changed.
Harnessing the women entrepreneurs well for everybody; it would make the populace
more extravagant, more beneficial and would reduce the level of gender diversity in the
market. The inquiry is what would we be able to do to help ladies in the Middle East start-up
industry?
The initial step is for more ladies to perceive their very own potential as business
people. Helping ladies progress toward becoming business visionaries and representatives
doesn't simply enhance the lives of ladies — it changes the entire economy to be more
beneficial, more focused and starts a wealthier society (Elstad and Ladegard, 2012). There are
additionally a lot of alternatives for ladies business visionaries hoping to make their stamp.
Prior this year, the production of the UAE Gender Balance Council was declared, which will
help endeavours to develop and upgrade the job of ladies as key accomplices in building the
eventual fate of the country. What's more, there are different associations that have been
extremely strong in empowering a cutting edge innovative soul, for example, Entrepreneurs'
Organization, The Female Network and Dubai Women's Business Council.
Ladies' business is an unexploited wellspring of monetary development in all parts of
the world. In the previous a while, few unique ladies business visionaries in the UAE has

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been studied, every one of whom have roused on a few dimensions. There is one thing which
has been believed by everyone that it is not possible for a person to woke up some day and
instantly become the entrepreneur, it takes a lot of time to people to understand the market
and become the entrepreneur (Mamoon and Murshed, 2013).
For most, the fantasy to work for you develops after some time, years even, before it
at last happens as expected. When a person passes the underlying trepidation and
impediments, the expectation to absorb information frequently pushes most to the edge of
disappointment.
Rather than surrendering, let your longing to fabricate, make and figure out how to
suppress fear. Build up a profound feeling of enthusiasm for inspiring and teaching yourself
to achieve more prominent statures in business. Some of the women have started the business
as part time job but along with the time, they have developed it as a full time business and
become one of the successful entrepreneurs.
The main feature of women to manage the small entrepreneurs is to experience the
market and measure all the aspects of the business which could negatively impact over the
performance of the business (Nagy, 2013). Investment of capital is also one of the major
aspects of entrepreneurship which should be kept in the mind while starting a business.
However estimation of ladies strengthening is troublesome and it is trying to
pass judgment on nation level execution as there is trouble in social event assorted
information. In view of the discoveries of, Women's Empowerment: Measuring Gender Gap,
five critical measurements have been chosen for the examination of ladies strengthening.
Financial interest alludes to commitment of females to workforce in quantitative terms.
Financial open door is identified with how much ladies are engaged with the economy, past
their unimportant nearness as labourers (Nekhili and Gatfaoui, 2013). This issue is gathered
in created nations where ladies access business effortlessly however they have little odds of
upward versatility. Political strengthening implies ladies have commitment in the basic
leadership and can impact arrangement making. Instructive accomplishment is imperative as
ladies can get indistinguishable open doors from men do and it tends to be a major advance
for improvement reason. Wellbeing and prosperity is related with how much females
approach adequate sustenance, social insurance and regenerative offices. It is extremely hard
to gauge each measurement in every nation and to actualize approach as every nation has

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numerous different components affecting its ladies strengthening (Mulcahy and Linehan,
2014).
The GEM quantitatively measures the freedom of ladies on a nation level. This
pointer includes the offer of imbalance responsible for earned financial assets, inclusion in
administrative basic leadership and monetary basic leadership. This variable measure how
much a power lady holds (Lückerath-Rovers, 2013).
Drawing upon Women's Empowerment: Measuring Gender Gap, a write about Taking
activity: accomplishing sexual orientation fairness and engaging ladies, steps forward and
explains further more on that there are three principle spaces. Capacities space which alludes
to essential human capacities as estimated by training, wellbeing, and sustenance in addition
to access to assets and openings area, which alludes basically to fairness in the chance to
utilize or apply fundamental abilities through access to financial resources lastly security
space (Nakhleh, 2014). These three areas are interconnected, and modification in all of three
is noteworthy in achieving Goal 3.
Critical analysis:
In order to achieve the understanding about the women empowerment, an interview
has been conducted with a woman to identify the level of empowerment. Below is the result
of the questionnaire. On the basis of the interview with a women entrepreneur, it has been
found that there are various difficulties in the market which would be faced by the women in
order to start and run their own business. The questionnaire has been given in the appendix.
The result of the questionnaire is as follows:
1. What is your business?
 Conventional shop: Clothing, furniture, shoes, Books and electronic products
2. Have you faced any issues while start up your enterprise?
 Yes
3. What are the main factors because of that you had to face the difficulties?
 Political

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 Environmental factor
 Social constraints
4. In which of the geographical region does your business fall?
 Nationally: in various gulf locations
5. Do you think current performance of your business is better?
 Yes
6. What are the requirements for starting the business?
 Employees engagement
 government policies
 Political factors
 Changes in the culture
 Flexible
7. How long ago have you been started your business?
 3-5 years ago
18. How do you manage your business?
 Through your own
10. Which of the key benefits for being your own boss?
 Reduced control
 Increases efficiencies and manpower
 Easy to manage everything
 make your own decisions
 To work faster
 To standardize business processes
 Entrance excess
11. What are the challenges to manage and run the business?

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 Heavy cultural control
 Restriction
 Taking it too long to travel from one place to another
 Increase in the cost
 stock management
 Reduced sales
The studied depicts that there are major issues which have been affected by the
business entrepreneurs and which must be elicited from the market in order to improve the
performance of the entrepreneurs in the market and manage the performance of the business.
Various challenges have been faced by women entrepreneur in the market because of the
political factors, cultures, masculinity etc. But along with the time, various positive changes
have been seen in the performance and the number of women empowerment. It has been
found that the women empowerment has been improved by 32% in 2015 which is a great
number and explains that the market has been changed.
It has been found that the UAE is one of the most developing nation with a solid
economy in Asian market, so excelling in business can frequently be less demanding here
than somewhere else on the planet. There are numerous open doors accessible to youthful
ability with enterprising vision, and the SME scene has advanced to an express that makes
beginning your own business much more available.
Conclusion and recommendation:
On the basis of the study over the woe=men empowerment, it has been found that the
number of women empowerment is continually improving in the market and it has managed
the overall position of the women in the market as well. the study represents that the UAE is
one of the most developing nation with a solid economy in Asian market, so excelling in
business can frequently be less demanding here than somewhere else on the planet.
With collaborating spaces accessible over the emirates and access to both on the web
and in-person independent ability, entrepreneurs never again need to stress over the issue of
employing staff and leasing office space when they're not exactly in the monetary position to
do as such.

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References:
Al-Alawi, A.I., 2016. Status of Bahraini women in the banking and financial sector:
challenges and opportunities. Journal of International Women's Studies, 17(4), pp.210-228.
Alsebaie, F.M.B., 2015. Women’s career advancement in the it field In the kingdom of
Bahrain (Doctoral dissertation, Engineering Research Centre).
Bashir, M.S., 2013. Analysis of customer satisfaction with the Islamic banking sector: case of
Brunei Darussalam. Asian Journal of Business and Management Sciences, 2(10), pp.38-50.
Boehe, D.M. and Cruz, L.B., 2013. Gender and microfinance performance: why does the
institutional context matter?. World Development, 47, pp.121-135.
Bruckmüller, S., Ryan, M.K., Haslam, S.A. and Peters, K., 2013. Ceilings, Cliffs, and
Labyrinths: Exploring Metaphors for workplace Gender Discrimination. The SAGE handbook
of gender and psychology, p.450.
Bushati, B. and Galvani, A., 2017. Images of gender among western and eastern perspective:
the case of Bahrain. European Journal of Geography, 8(3), pp.126-137.
Elstad, B. and Ladegard, G., 2012. Women on corporate boards: key influencers or tokens?.
Journal of Management & Governance, 16(4), pp.595-615.
Eslen-Ziya, H., 2013. Social media and Turkish feminism: New resources for social
activism. Feminist Media Studies, 13(5), pp.860-870.
Findlow, S., 2013. Higher education and feminism in the Arab Gulf. British Journal of
Sociology of Education, 34(1), pp.112-131.
Freshwater, D. 2012. “Reading mixed methods research: contexts for criticism”, Journal of
Mixed Methods Research, 1(2), pp. 134-46.

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Lückerath-Rovers, M., 2013. Women on boards and firm performance. Journal of
Management & Governance, 17(2), pp.491-509.
Mamoon, D. and Murshed, S.M., 2013. Education bias of trade liberalization and wage
inequality in developing countries. The Journal of International Trade & Economic
Development, 22(4), pp.572-604.
Mulcahy, M. and Linehan, C., 2014. Females and precarious board positions: Further
evidence of the glass cliff. British Journal of Management, 25(3), pp.425-438.
Nagy, S., 2013. Bahraini and NonBahraini Women in Bahrain’s Workforce. Gender, Work
and Nationality. Arabian Humanities. Revue internationale d’archéologie et de sciences
sociales sur la péninsule Arabique/International Journal of Archaeology and Social Sciences
in the Arabian Peninsula, (1).
Nakhleh, E., 2014. Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Spring That Wasn't.
Nekhili, M. and Gatfaoui, H., 2013. Are demographic attributes and firm characteristics
drivers of gender diversity? Investigating women’s positions on French boards of directors.
Journal of business ethics, 118(2), pp.227-249.

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Appendix:
Section A:Respondent’s Details and Consent Form
Please tick
1. I confirm that I have read and understood the participant information sheet
for the above study and have had the opportunity to ask questions.
2. I understand that my participation is voluntary and that I am free to
withdraw at anytime without giving a reason.
Company Profile:
Interviewee’s Name:
Job Title:
Company’s Name:
Email Address:
Phone Number:

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Section B:Company’s General Information:
Note: The main purpose of this survey is to investigate the opportunities and the
challenges associated with the women empowerment.
3. What is your business? Supermarket: Sells a variety of clothing products and shoes
 Conventional shop: Clothing, furniture, shoes, Books and electronic products
 Hypermarket: sells a wide range of general merchandise and wearing products found
in a supermarket
 Online store: sells online numerous products
 Other. Please specify:
……………………………………………………………………………………………......
4. Have you faced any issues while start up your enterprise?
 Yes
 No
 Other.
Please specify:
……………………………………………………………………………………………......
3. What are the main factors because of that you had to face the difficulties?
 Political
 Enviromental factor
 Social constraints
 Wor life balance
 Inadequate training
 Governent policies
 Other.
Please specify:………………………………………………………………….

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4. In which of the geographical region does your business fall?
 Locally: Only in Coventry
 Regionally: in West Midlands (e.g. Coventry, Birmingham, Wolver Hampton)
 Nationally: in various gulf locations
 Gulf market: in various gulf locations
 Internationally: in various countries across the world
 Don’t Know
 Other. Please Specify:
…………………………………………………………………………………………
……
5.Do you think current performance of your business is better?
 Yes
 No
 Other.
Pleasespecify:
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
6.What are the requirements for starting the business?
 Employees engagement
 government policies
 Political factors
 Chnages in the culture
 Flexible
 Do not know
 Other.
Please specify:
………………………………………………………………………………………
7. How long ago have you been started your business?
 0-3 years ago
 3-5 years ago
 >10 years ago
 This year
 In the next year

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 Do not know
 Other.
Please Specify:
…………………………………………………………………………………….
18. How do you manage your business?
 Through your own
 With the help of family
 you have your own staff
 Don’t know
 Other
please specify:
……………………………………………………………………………………………
10. Which of the key benefits for being your own boss?
 Reduced control
 Reduce emission and energy consumption
 Increases efficiencies and manpower
 Enhance road safety
 Easy to manage everything
 make your own decisions
 To work faster
 To standardize business processes
 Entrance excess
 Don’t know
 Other.
Please specify:
…………………………………………………………………………………………..
11. What are the challenges to manage and run the business?
 Heavy cultural control
 Restriction

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 Taking it too long to travel from one place to another
 Increase in the cost
 Less manpower needed
 Easier stock management
 Higher productivity
 Higher profitability
 Reduced sales
 Don’t Know
 Other.
Please specify:
………………………………………………………………………………………....
Thank you for your participation.