BARRIERS AND ENABLERS OF WOMEN IN BUSINESS IN BOTSWANA

Are Diamonds there forever? – Prospects for a Sustainable Development Model for Botswana.

Lansmore Hotel, Masa Square, Gaborone Botswana

27th - 28th August, 2014

Makepe P.M; Okurut F.N; Montsi K and Oageng I

Outline

Introduction Objectives Literature Review Method Results Possible solutions Conclusion

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Introduction

Women’s economic empowerment stands out in policy discourse at international and national levels currently

Empirical literature suggests gender inequalities in labour market outcomes which tend to constraint women’s economic empowerment (Polachek, 1981; Becker, 1971 and Folbre, 1994)

Gender division of labour in the household also contributes to labour market inequalities

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Introduction . . .

Gender inequalities in labour market processes and outcomes are rational responses by households to pre-existing constraints

According to CSO (2008), women in Botswana were more likely to be unemployed (62.5%) as compared to their counterparts

Enhancement of the performance of women enterprises therefore critical for women empowerment and diversification

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Motivation/Justification Women’s ability to aspire to operate their own

enterprises is limited by various socio-cultural and glass ceiling barriers 5

In particular, women are not able to operate large enterprises that can transform their socio-economic status, accelerate economic growth and diversification.

Only a few have managed to transcend these barriers and establish large corporations (PWC, 2007) due mostly to influence of government interventional policies and various socioeconomic enablers.

This study investigated factors that affect the performance of women enterprises in Botswana

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THE ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT JOURNEY

CURRENT FUTURE

ABILITY= skills + resources

POWER= possessing agency, decision making, control over profits

Objectives…. The key objectives of the study were:

To identify the key barriers and enablers to women’s businesses in Botswana

To suggest possible solutions that can help to enhance the performance of women owned or managed businesses in Botswana

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Literature Review Different models have been used to investigate

factors influencing women participation in business:

Evans and Leignton, (1989) studying determinants of women self employment used a logit model to assess how economic and demographic changes influence self employment in the US.

Bullough (2008) carried a multilevel, cross-country analysis of factors influencing women participation in business leadership. The author concludes that factors affecting women participation

in business leadership varies depending on the context of the environment in which they operate, implying that it is not enough to use few direct dependent variables to explain women participation in business leadership across distinct cultural, economical and social settings

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Results Descriptive results suggested that the key drivers of

women business are access to credit and capacity building in business mgt/devt.

The regulatory environment (business reg & licensing req) did not pose any significant constraint to women businesses

Noted is competition which posed a major challenge and women in business do not have strong networks with other women

Econometric results also indicated a positive and significant influence of performance of women enterprises by labour productivity, access to credit and training

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Determinants of Performance of Women Enterprises

Dependent Variable: log of annual business earnings  

Explanatory Variables Coefficient t-value p-value  

Log of experience 0.2485 1.47 0.149  

Log of labour productivity 0.9367 26.62 0.000 ***

Log of education level 0.1197 0.82 0.418  

Network: dummy 0.1308 0.32 0.746  

Credit access: dummy 0.6259 1.71 0.095 *

Training: dummy 0.7894 1.82 0.075 *

ICT: dummy 0.5960 1.36 0.182  

Constant 0.8565 1.62 0.113  

No. of observations 50      

F(8,41) 132.94      

Prob>F 0.0000      

Significance level: ***= 1%, **=5%, *=10%    

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Possible Solutions Barriers to accessing credit and capacity building

for women enterprises need to be removed to enhance their growth and promote economic growth in Botswana.

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The end…

THANK YOU!!!

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