Factors discouraging the growth of women entrepreneurship in Bangladesh

Active participation of women in entrepreneurial activities becomes imperative for ensuring national growth of Bangladesh. But, numerous factors discourage them in starting and running their own business enterprise. This study intends to identify those factors and analyse the effects of some selected factors that discourage women entrepreneurship in Bangladesh. A mixed method approach - qualitative approach followed by quantitative approach - was used to conduct the study by distributing self-administered questionnaires among 200 women entrepreneurs selected conveniently from the Rangpur division of Bangladesh. ANOVA and multiple regressions were performed with the help of SPSS version 21.0 to analyse the data and test the proposed hypothesis. Findings reveal that social and cultural obstacles, family obligations, dual responsibilities, hostile administrative environment and policy, and uneven religious and inheritance laws discourage the growth of women entrepreneurship in Bangladesh. This paper also includes discussions on the practical implications of the findings with scope of future research.