International Journal of Management (IJM)

Volume 11, Issue 10, October 2020, pp. 379-392, Article ID: IJM_11_10_037
Available online at http://www.iaeme.com/IJM/issues.asp?JType=IJM&VType=11&IType=10
ISSN Print: 0976-6502 and ISSN Online: 0976-6510
DOI: 10.34218/IJM.11.10.2020.037

© IAEME Publication Scopus Indexed

WOMEN EMPOWERMENT THROUGH

ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN
BANGLADESH: A MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS
Mohammad Shamsul Hoque
PhD Researcher, Bangladesh University of Professionals and Enterprise Advisor and
Coordinator-GEAR, Better Work Bangladesh, International Labour Organization, Bangladesh

Dr. Haripada Bhattacharjee

Professor, Department of Marketing, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh

Dr. Nazrul Islam

Professor & Dean, School of Business, Canadian University of Bangladesh

ABSTRACT
Needless to say that the women entrepreneurs of Bangladesh lack behind in
economic participation, leadership and empowerment compared to men
entrepreneurs. Research shows that about seven percent of the total business
establishments of Bangladesh are owned and headed by women which are negligible
in terms of the women population proportion of the country. This limited ownership,
leadership and empowerment of women is a clear gap which is to be fulfilled for the
sustainable economic development of the country. In recent years, the rate of new
business formation in Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) sector by women has
significantly increased which is creating socioeconomic and leadership impact at
work, home, and the community. Hence, this study aims at identifying the women
entrepreneurship development factors and examining the causal relationship between
entrepreneurship development and women empowerment. This is a causal research
and the study used primary data collected from the women entrepreneurs engaged in
Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) businesses. The study used both probability and
non-probability sampling techniques to select 397 women business entrepreneurs who
are involved in SME businesses for interview. The data were analyzed by using
Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM)
techniques. The results show that the factors concerning women entrepreneurship
development such as regulatory framework, entrepreneurship education and training,
role of women business association and husband engagement in women business have
direct and significance effects on WED. The access to finance and access to market
facilities were not significant. Through the development of entrepreneurship in SME
sector, women empowerment factors such as, economic empowerment, social

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 Women Empowerment through Entrepreneurship Development in Bangladesh: A Multivariate Analysis

empowerment and women entrepreneurial leadership capabilities were developed

among the women entrepreneurs. This study suggests that the policy makers of this
sector should emphasize on regulatory framework, entrepreneurship education and
training, husband engagement in women business and the role of women business
association in formulating the SME policy to increase women empowerment for the
sustainable development of Bangladesh.
Key words: Women Empowerment through Entrepreneurship; Women Leadership
Capabilities; Women Social Empowerment; Women Economic Empowerment
Cite this Article: Mohammad Shamsul Hoque, Dr. Haripada Bhattacharjee and
Dr. Nazrul Islam, Women Empowerment through Entrepreneurship Development in
Bangladesh: A Multivariate Analysis, International Journal of Management, 11(10),
2020, pp. 379-392.
http://www.iaeme.com/IJM/issues.asp?JType=IJM&VType=11&IType=10

1. INTRODUCTION
Women entrepreneurship development and women empowerment both are priority socio-
economic development agenda in developing country like Bangladesh. But women
entrepreneurs of Bangladesh lack behind in economic participation, empowerment and
leadership [1,2] compared to men entrepreneurs. Research shows that female entrepreneurs
are emerging as important players in the national economy [3] and female entrepreneurs
represent the fastest growing category of entrepreneurship worldwide and have received
enormous attention of many academics in recent years. According to the emerging literature,
women can make a significant contribution to entrepreneurial activity [4] and economic
development [5,6] in terms of creating new jobs and increasing the gross domestic product
(GDP) [7] with positive impacts on reducing poverty and social exclusion [8]. The percentage
of women who decide to pursue an entrepreneurial career is, however, lower than that of men
[9]. Research shows that about seven percent of the total business establishments of
Bangladesh are owned and headed by women [10] which are negligible in terms of the
women population proportion of the country. This limited ownership, leadership and
empowerment of women is a clear gap which is to be fulfilled for the sustainable economic
development of the country. Conducting further research on women empowerment and
leadership and recognizing its effectiveness is important [11]. Women‘s participation and
empowerment in business is essential to unlock a country‘s full economic potential.
Entrepreneurship development eases the path of career opportunity and economic
advancement for women in any country.
Hence, the questions of current study is what concerns women entrepreneurship
development factors improve women empowerment? What is the causal relationship between
the women entrepreneurship development and women empowerment in SME sector of
Bangladesh? Thus, the specific objectives of the study are outlined below.
 To identify the factors concerning women entrepreneurship development in SME
sector of Bangladesh;
 To examine whether the women entrepreneurship development improve women
empowerment in SME sector of Bangladesh;
 To examine the causal relationship between the women entrepreneurship development
and the women empowerment dimensions such as women economic, social and
leadership capabilities in SME sector of Bangladesh.

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 Mohammad Shamsul Hoque, Dr. Haripada Bhattacharjee and Dr. Nazrul Islam

2. LITERATURE REVIEW AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

2.1. Women Entrepreneurship Development (WED) Factors
The entrepreneurship is the ―functions of seeking investment and production opportunity,
organizing an enterprise to undertake a new production process, raising capital, hiring labor,
arranging the supply of raw materials, finding site, introducing a new technique and
commodities, discovering new sources of raw materials and selecting top managers of day to
day operations of the enterprise [12]. In order to perform these entrepreneurial activities,
women entrepreneurs require external supports from government, private sector, service
delivery institutions, family and society as a whole. The process of these factors collectively
contribute to develop entrepreneurship in SME sector. We conducted a comprehensive
literature review to develop a conceptual framework on women entrepreneurship development
factors. We revealed that research scholars used different factors such as friendly regulatory
framework [1,2,13,14,15,16,17,18], access to finance [1,2,13,14,19,20,21], entrepreneurship
education and training [1, 14,22,23,19,16,17,21,24,18], Access to market/market conditions
[2,13,15,21,18], business association/women‘s network [14,25], family supports [22,26,27].
ILO developed an intervention model for women entrepreneurship development which also
outlined WED factors such as access to finance, business development services (business
training, advice/mentoring, technology transfer, formalization), access to market, enabling
environment and women‘s agency (activities to enhance women‘s decision making capacity).
Aftercritically analysing the development factors, we named six key factors that influence
women entrepreneurship development in SMEs in Bangladesh that is shown in figure 1.

2.2. Women Empowerment (WEM) through Entrepreneurship Development

Women‘s empowerment is a process of personal and social change, taking place over
interlinked and mutually reinforcing psychological, political, social and economic domains,
and through which women individually and collectively gain power, meaningful choices and
control over their lives [28]. Women entrepreneurship enables to achieve both financial and
social empowerment which is important for women‘s sustainable livelihood [19]. A review of
research on this emerging field indicates parallels between entrepreneurship and leadership,
yet there is no agreed-upon definition [29]. But women entrepreneurs are both direct and
indirect leaders in their communities, especially in developing countries [24]. Entrepreneurial
leadership are those leadership capabilities that achieve success in organizations through
innovation and opportunity development [30]. Sustaining women‘s empowerment is a central
conversation for longevity and effectiveness of interventions and inclusion and equality
require continuous policy commitment [31]. The literature shows that women
entrepreneurship development process not only expedite the process of women empowerment
but also women leadership capabilities. Understanding the leadership practices needed for
success in SMEs becomes even more important when examining the role of gender as much
of the entrepreneurial leadership has been described as gender blind, gender neutral, and
gender defensive [30]. Diversity and complexity of women‘s entrepreneurial leadership,
demonstrated both economically and contextually embedded [32]. The contribution of this
research study is that along with women economic and social empowerment, women
entrepreneurs achieve entrepreneurial leadership capabilities. To meet this, this study aims to
go beyond the economic and social factors of entrepreneurship and look into its leadership
capabilities development as well. The researcher and scholars used different empowerment
dimensions and variables to frame and measure women empowerment such as dimensions-
Economic Empowerment [33,34] with related measurable variables such as freedom of own
earnings [34,35], bearing family expenditures [36,37], providing quality education for
children [33,37], access to and control over resources [33,38], Social Empowerment [39,40]

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 Women Empowerment through Entrepreneurship Development in Bangladesh: A Multivariate Analysis

with related measurable variables such as public mobility [39,41,38], social dignity/power
[33,39], social networking [19,24,39,35] and collective actions [39,42] and Entrepreneurial
Leadership capabilities [43] with related measurable variables such as commitment and
passions [32,43], communications and public speaking skills [24,43], empowering others
[44], influencing capabilities [42,45,46] and problem solving skills ([39, 42, 43].

2.3. Conceptual Framework and Hypothesis Development on Women

Empowerment through Entrepreneurship Development
Based on extensive first-hand experience and comprehensive literature review on women
empowerment and women entrepreneurship development, we have presented a conceptual
framework for this study (Figure 1). The framework explains that the different
entrepreneurship development factors (inputs/activities) influence to the process of women
entrepreneurship development and entrepreneurship development process influence to the
outcome of women empowerment.

2.3.1. Development of Hypotheses

Women entrepreneurship development improves women empowerment particularly women
economic empowerment, social empowerment and leadership capabilities.

2.3.2. Relationship between the Women Entrepreneurship Development Factors (WEDF)

and Women Entrepreneurship Development (WED)
Women entrepreneurs generate business ideas by identifying potential opportunities about the
products/services, exploring new entry opportunity and business prospects. They develop
business concepts to transfer opportunities to marketable goods and services. They identify
what type of resources they require to start businesses, assemble necessary resources and
allocation of the resources. They perform enterprise management activities include planning
of operations, management of production, marketing and procurement, organization of man,
machine and materials, controlling of the operations through leading, directing and

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 Mohammad Shamsul Hoque, Dr. Haripada Bhattacharjee and Dr. Nazrul Islam

supervision, managing customer expectation and maintaining quality assurance of the

products/services. They also perform evaluation of enterprise performance for future
improvement and growth. These functions in different stages women entrepreneurs require
external stimulatory, supportive and sustaining environment that enhance women
entrepreneurs knowledge and skills structure, competencies, creativity and innovation for
doing business. In this process, the regulatory framework supports entrepreneurship
development through friendly services of licensing, VAT and tax, establishing one stop
service center, public private coordination mechanism of policy implementation.
Entrepreneurship education and training such as business start-up training, adequate supply of
women trainers, skills development training and occupational health and safety training are
prerequisite for resourcing and enterprise management. Women entrepreneurs also require
access to finance and financial services include equal access to loan for women and men,
availability of loan in rural and urban areas and financial advisory services. Entrepreneurship
growth also depends on the affordable and accessible markets facilities include access to
industrial park, available market linkages with urban and local entrepreneurs and affordable
market premises.
For the development and maturity of the entrepreneurship, women business association
can play an important role in organizing public-private dialogue to simplify business
processes, organizing training on productivity and quality, organizing zone wise trade fair and
lobbying with policy makers for contributing formulation of women entrepreneurship policy
framework. Literature shows that family support positively contribute to the development and
growth of the women entrepreneurship. Husband engagement in women business as family
support also play positive role for women. They can encourage women to take part in social
work, support in providing freedom of mobility and participating in the trade fair and
cooperating in taking care of children in the family. All these factors expedite the process of
WED. Thus, we examine the hypothesis as follows;
H1a: Regulatory framework positively and significantly expedite the WED in SME sector in
Bangladesh.
H1b: Access to finance and financial services positively and significantly expedite the WED
in SME sector in Bangladesh.
H1c: Entrepreneurship education and training positively and significantly expedites the WED
in SME sector in Bangladesh.
H1d: Access to market facilities positively and significantly expedites the WED in SME
sector in Bangladesh.
H1e: Role of women business associations positively and significantly expedite the WED in
SME sector in Bangladesh.
H1f: Husband engagement in women business positively and significantly expedite the WED
in SME sector in Bangladesh.

2.3.3. Overall Effect of Women Entrepreneurship Development (WED) and Women

Empowerment Dimensions
The overall WED process lead women entrepreneurs to enhance their knowledge and skills
structure and supportive business environment to generate business ideas and business
concepts, resourcing and management and performance evaluation for sustainable business.
These activities improve women entrepreneurs psychological, cognitive and behavior abilities
over the time. These help women entrepreneurs to exercise creativity and innovation,
management and leadership capabilities and taking risks and harvesting growth. Through
entrepreneurship, they advance both economically and socially. This process helps to change

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 Women Empowerment through Entrepreneurship Development in Bangladesh: A Multivariate Analysis

their life and livelihood and gain power on control over lives. They gain power within and
outside of the enterprise and family and society as a whole. The economic empowerment
helps to exercise more freedom of own earnings, bear family expenditures, arranging more
quality education and foods for children and family and they achieve access to and control
over their household and enterprise resources. The entrepreneurship development process
extend their power and abilities even in the social domain. Women entrepreneurs gradually
come forward to engage and deal with social networking, their mobility and visibility
increased due to diversified communications with government, service providing institutions,
dealing customers and suppliers. Through this process, they feel more social power and
dignity. In many cases they take part in the collective actions through social networks.
Entrepreneurship functions create avenue to exercise entrepreneurial leadership
capabilities within and beyond the enterprise. Women entrepreneurs achieve stronger
commitment and passions, communications and public speaking skills, influencing abilities,
problem solving skills, empowering and inspiring others. Thus, in the study we wanted to
examine causal relationship among WED and Women Empowerment Dimensions.
Hypothesis (H2): The WED positively and significantly helps to improve women
empowerment among SME women of Bangladesh.
Hypothesis (H3): The WED positively and significantly helps to improve women economic
empowerment, social empowerment and leadership capabilities among SME women of
Bangladesh.

3. RESEARCH METHODS
In order to establish a hypothesized causal relationship between the WED and WEM
dimensions, we conducted causal research using quantitative method. The primary data were
collected from the women entrepreneurs of seven administrative divisional head-quarters of
Bangladesh using listed entrepreneurs of BWCCI. We used both probability (cluster) and
non-probability (conveneince) sampling techniques. We interviewed 397 women
entrepreneurs that were adequate for performing multivariate analysis (Hair et., al., 2010).
The main survey was conducted in 2018. We developed structured questionnaire using Likert
scale. We used 57 variables under different factors to measure the effect of WED on WEM.
We used multivariate analysis techniques-exploratory factor analysis, structural equation
modelling, and paths analysis. Common Factor Analysis with an orthogonal rotation
(Promax) method was conducted using SPSS (v-22.0) to extract and separate number of
meaningful factors that develop entrepreneurship and women empowerment and we analyzed
SEM using AMOS software to examine overall effects. By EFA, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test
of sampling adequacy found 0.849 indicated the strength of the relationship between the
variables is meritorious. By communality test, a total of 35 variables extracted and the
average communalities value was 0.676>0.60 that satisfied Kaiser Criterion reliability. The
Eigen value greater than 1 was found 9 factors and these factors explain 67.609% of the total
variance of the data set.
To ensure the instruments are error free and reflection of the reality, we conducted
reliability test using Cronbach‘s Alpha (CA), convergent validity test with factor loadings,
average variance extracted (AVE), composite reliability (CR) and discriminant validity to see
the factors and constructs are independent and distinctly different from each other. Table 1
shows that all CA are higher than 0.80 (CA>0.70), all factor loadings are greater than 0.70
(factor loadings>0.50, (Hair et. al., 2010). The AVE and the CR of all the 9 latent constructs
values are greater than 0.60 (AVE>0.50, (Hair et. al., 2010) and 0.80 (CR>0.70, (Hair et., al.,
2010) respectively. All constructs demonstrated discriminant validity (Fornell & Larcker,
1981). So, all the criteria exceeded the minimum acceptable values.

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 Mohammad Shamsul Hoque, Dr. Haripada Bhattacharjee and Dr. Nazrul Islam

Table 1 An Overview of the Constructs

Factors/ Variables Commu Factor CR AVE
CA
Dimensions nality loadings
Regulatory Friendly services (licensing, VAT, tax) 0.791 .889
framework One stop service center 0.704 .833 0.880 0.711 .879
Public private coordination 0.662 .809
Education Business start-up training 0.679 .862
and Supply of women trainers 0.755 .794
0.881 0.651 .881
training Skills development training 0.611 .784
Occupational health and safety training 0.611 .782
Access to Equal access to loan 0.738 .861
finance Available loan in rural and urban areas. 0.742 .855 0.876 0.702 .875
Financial advisory services 0.649 .800
Access to Access to industrial park 0.651 .848
markets Available market linkages 0.645 .807 0.854 0.662 .854
Affordable market premises 0.729 .796
Role of WA Organize public-private dialogue 0.656 .842
Organize training on productivity 0.627 .794
Lobby with policy makers 0.631 .776 0.889 0.616 .888
Contribute in formulating policy 0.601 .767
Organize trade fair 0.620 .722
Husband Encourage to take part in social work 0.701 .847
engagement Support in public mobility 0.685 .838
0.901 0.694 .901
Support in participating in the trade fair 0.710 .828
Cooperate in taking care of children 0.736 .822
Economic More freedom on own earnings 0.609 .986
Empowerm Bearing expenditures of family 0.910 .794
0.884 0.657 .878
ent Providing more quality education 0.544 .724
Access to and control over resources 0.602 .708
Social Public mobility increased 0.726 .878
Empowerm Social dignity/power increased 0.636 .849
0.899 0.689 .899
ent Social networking abilities increased 0.763 .816
Take part in collective actions 0.668 .772
Leadership Stronger commitment and passions 0.625 .820
capabilities Enhanced communications and public .814
0.694
speaking skills
0.895 0.631 .894
Ability to empower others 0.632 .806
Increased influencing capabilities 0.682 .805
Lead in solving problems 0.637 .734

4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

4.1. The WEDF Expedite the WED
Through the SEM, we converted the theoretical research framework (figure-1) into AMOS
graphic path diagram (figure-2).The WEDF such as regulatory framework, entrepreneurship
education and training, access to finance, access to market facilities, role of women business
association and husband engagement in women business factors expedite the WED that helps
to improve women empowerment. The causal relationship among these constructs is shown
through the research model (Figure 2).

4.2. Hypothesis-1 (H1): The WEDF Positively and Significantly related with the
WE in SME Sector in Bangladesh
Table 2, the standardized beta estimate (β1=0.772) indicated that there is a direct effect of the
WED on WEM. Therefore, if entrepreneurship practice increases by 1 standard deviation, the
WEM increases by 0.772 standard deviations. Since the P-value<0.001, the relationship

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 Women Empowerment through Entrepreneurship Development in Bangladesh: A Multivariate Analysis

between WED and WEM is highly significant. The value of the coefficient of determination is
0.596 (Figure-2) indicates that 60% of the variance of WEM is accounted for by the WED
practices. The reason for highly significance of the relationship includes WED collectively
contributes to the development of the WEDF and women entrepreneurs directly and indirectly
achieved women empowerment in SME sector in Bangladesh.

4.3. Hypothesis-2 (H2): The WED Positively and Significantly help to improve
WEM in SME Sector in Bangladesh
The test results (Table 2) shows that the direct effect of regulatory framework (RF) on WED
is 22% (p<0.001). The reasons for significance of the factor include women entrepreneurs
thought that the friendly regulatory service delivery such as licensing, tax and VAT,
establishing one stop services and public and private coordination mechanism help them to
expedite business. The direct effect of entrepreneurship education and training (EET) on
WED is 80% (p<0.001) and contribution of EET in estimating the WED is 68%. The reasons
of the effectiveness of the EET that women entrepreneurs believe that business start-up,
adequate supply of women trainers, skills development and occupational health and safety
training are prerequisite for resourcing and enterprise management.

Table 2 Results of Hypothesis Testing

Hyp Cnt Construct Std. estimate S.E. C.R. P comments
H1 WEM <--- WED .772 .070 7.634 *** Significant
H1a RF <--- WED .217 .072 3.450 *** Significant
H1b EET <--- WED .799 .078 12.110 *** Significant
H1c AEF <--- WED .102 .080 1.618 .106 Not significant
H1d AEM <--- WED .032 .088 .494 .621 Not significant
H1e WBA <--- WED .521 .063 8.177 *** Significant
H1f HEB <--- WED .561 .074 8.978 *** Significant

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 Mohammad Shamsul Hoque, Dr. Haripada Bhattacharjee and Dr. Nazrul Islam

The direct effect of role of women business association (WBA) on WED is 52%
(p<0.001). The contribution of WBA in estimating WED is 27%. The reasons of effectiveness
of WBA is that for the development of entrepreneurship, women business association can
play an important role in organizing public-private dialogue to simplify business processes,
organizing training on productivity and quality, organizing zone wise trade fair and lobbying
with policy makers for contributing formulation of women entrepreneurship policy
framework.
The direct effect of husband engagement in women business (HEB) on WED is 56%
(p<0.001). The study revealed that husband engagement in women business as family support
can develop entrepreneurship. Husband can encourage women to take part in social work,
support in freedom of mobility and participating in the trade fair and cooperating in taking
care of children in the family.
The relationship between access to finance (AEF) and WED is positive but it was not
significant (p=0.106>.05). The reasons might be the existing access to finance and financial
services include equal access to loan for women and men, availability of loan in rural and
urban areas and financial advisory services were not in favor of the women entrepreneurs at
local level.
The relationship between access to market facilities (AEM) and WED is positive but it
was not significant (p=0.621>.05). The reasons might be the existing access to market
facilities of women such as access to industrial park, available market linkages with urban and
local entrepreneurs and affordable market premises were not in favour of the women
entrepreneurs at the local level.

4.4. (Hypothesis (H3): The WED positively and significantly improves Women
Economic Empowerment, Women Social Empowerment and Leadership
Capabilities among in SME Women of Bangladesh
The overall WED process lead women entrepreneurs to enhance their knowledge and skill
structure and supportive business environment to generate business ideas and business
concepts, resourcing and management and performance evaluation. These activities improve
women entrepreneurs psychological, cognitive and behavior abilities over the time. These
help women entrepreneurs to exercise creativity and innovation, management and leadership
capabilities for business development and growth. Through entrepreneurship, they advance
both economically and socially. This process helps to change their life and livelihood and
control over lives. They gain power within and outside of the enterprise and family and
society as a whole. The economic empowerment helps to exercise more freedom of own
earnings, bear family expenditures, arranging more quality education and foods for children
and family and they achieve access to and control over their household and enterprise
resources. The entrepreneurship development process extend their power and abilities even in
the social domain. Women entrepreneurs gradually come forward to engage and deal with
social networks, their mobility and visibility increased due to diversified communications
with government, service providing institutions, banks, dealing customers and suppliers.
Through this process they feel more social power and dignity. In many cases they take part in
the collective actions through social and business networks.
Entrepreneurship functions create avenue to exercise entrepreneurial leadership
capabilities within and beyond the enterprise. Women entrepreneurs achieve stronger
commitment and passions, communications and public speaking skills, influencing abilities,
problem solving skills, empowering and inspiring others.

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 Women Empowerment through Entrepreneurship Development in Bangladesh: A Multivariate Analysis

Table 3 Results of Hypothesis Testing

Hp const Construct Std. estimate S.E. C.R. P Comments
H2a EEM <--- WED .588 .070 7.634 *** Significant
H2b SEM <--- WED .475 .076 6.221 *** Significant
H2c LCD <--- WED .499 .063 6.411 *** Significant
Table 3 shows that the direct effect of the WED on women economic empowerment is
approximately 59% (P<0.001). The R-square value indicates that 35% of the variance of EEM
is accounted for by the WED. The direct effect of WED on social empowerment is 0.475
(P<0.001). The direct effect of the WED on women leadership capabilities development is
0.499 (p<0.001). Through entrepreneurship activities, the women entrepreneurs can achieve
women empowerment especially in three inter-related and interlinked dimensions such as
women economic empowerment, social empowerment and women entrepreneurial leadership
capabilities.

4.5. Assessing Validity of the Structural Model

We assessed the validity of SEM through model fit index. We found key model fit index
values include CMIN=821.204; DF=550; CMIN/DF=1.493<3; CFI=0.966>0.95;
SRMR=0.053<0.08; RMSEA=0.035<0.06; PClose=1.000>0.05. Comparing the model fit
index values with cut-off values (Hu and Bentler (1999) indicated that the SEM model is a
good fit model.

5. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Needless to say that the women entrepreneurs of Bangladesh lack behind in economic
participation and leadership compared to men entrepreneurs. Research shows that about seven
percent of the total business establishments of Bangladesh are owned and headed by women
which are negligible in terms of the women population proportion of the country. This limited
ownership, leadership and empowerment of women is a clear gap which is to be fulfilled for
the sustainable economic development of the country. That is why this causal research aims to
examine the relationships between women entrepreneurship development (WED) and women
empowerment (WEM) in SME business sector of Bangladesh. Using proportionate cluster
and convenience sampling techniques, this study conducted interviewed 397 women SME
entrepreneurs from seven administrative divisional head-quarters of Bangladesh. The data
were analyzed by using factor analysis by using SPSS and SEM techniques. The key finding
of this study is that women entrepreneurship development directly and significantly improves
women empowerment in Bangladesh. The important findings of this study are as follows:
First findings, the WED improves women empowerment (beta 77%, P<.001) among women
entrepreneurs by exercising the WED activities within and beyond the enterprises.
Second findings, this study have identified four entrepreneurship development factors that
directly and significantly expedite the WED which are friendly regulatory framework,
entrepreneurship education and training, role of women business association and husband
engagement in women business. The most significant factor is entrepreneurship education and
training (std. beta 80%, p<0.001). The reasons of the significance are that women
entrepreneurs believed that business start-up training, adequate supply of women trainers at
local level, skills development such as human and financial management and occupational
health and safety training are prerequisite for effective and efficient enterprise resourcing and
management. In businesses, women entrepreneurs have to identify and manage what type of
resources they require to start businesses, assemble necessary resources, allocate resources
(money, workforce, machine, and materials) and undertake capacity development of the
workforce for improving productivity and quality of the product and services.

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 Mohammad Shamsul Hoque, Dr. Haripada Bhattacharjee and Dr. Nazrul Islam

The second most significant factor is husband engagement in women business (std. beta
56%(p<0.001). The study revealed that HEB can help to develop entrepreneurship by
encouraging women to take part in social work, supporting in freedom of mobility and
participating in the trade fair and cooperating in taking care of children in the family. The
third significant factor is the role of women business association (std beta 52%, p<0.001). The
reasons of effectiveness of WBA is that women business association can play an important
role in organizing public-private dialogue to simplify business processes, organizing training
on productivity and quality, organizing zone wise trade fair and lobbying with policy makers
for contributing formulation of women entrepreneurship policy framework. The fourth
significant WED factor is regulatory framework of the country (beta 22%, p<0.001). The
reasons for significance of the factor include women entrepreneurs thought that the friendly
regulatory service delivery such as licensing, tax and VAT, establishing one stop services and
public and private coordination mechanism will help them to expedite business.
The relationship between access to finance (AEF) and access to market facilities with
WED are positive but were not significant. The reasons might be the existing access to
finance and financial services include equal access to loan for women and men, availability of
loan in rural and urban areas and financial advisory services and access to market facilities
such as access to industrial park, available market linkages with urban and local entrepreneurs
and affordable market premises were not in favour of the women entrepreneurs at the local
level.
Third findings, the WED improves women empowerment in three interlinked and inter-
related dimensions such as women economic empowerment (std. beta 59%, P<0.001), social
empowerment (Std. beta 48%, P<0.001) and women leadership capabilities (std. beta 50%,
p<0.001) by exercising entrepreneurship functions.
The reasons of the direct and significance relationship is that the WED process lead
women entrepreneurs to enhance their knowledge and skill structure and supportive business
environment to generate business ideas and business concepts, resourcing and management.
These activities improve women entrepreneurs psychological, cognitive and behavior abilities
over the time. These help women entrepreneurs to exercise creativity and innovation,
management and leadership capabilities. Through entrepreneurship, they advance both
economically and socially. This process helps to change their life and livelihood and control
over lives. They gain power within and outside of the enterprise and family and society as a
whole. The economic empowerment helps to exercise more freedom of their own earnings,
bear family expenditures, arranging more quality education and foods for children and family
and they achieve access to and control over their household and enterprise resources. The
entrepreneurship development process extend their power and abilities even in the social
domain. Women entrepreneurs gradually come forward to engage and deal with social and
business networks, increase their mobility and visibility due to communications with
government, service providing institutions, banks, dealing customers and suppliers. Through
this process they feel more social power and dignity. In many cases they take part in the
collective actions through social and business networks. Entrepreneurship functions also
create avenue to exercise entrepreneurial leadership capabilities within and beyond the
enterprise. Women entrepreneurs achieve stronger commitment and passions to enterprises,
communications and public speaking skills, influencing abilities, problem solving skills,
empowering and inspiring others.
This study suggests that the policy makers of this SME sector of business should
emphasize on regulatory framework, entrepreneurial education and training, role of women
business association and husband engagement in women business in order to expedite

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 Women Empowerment through Entrepreneurship Development in Bangladesh: A Multivariate Analysis

entrepreneurship development and improve women empowerment particularly economic,

social and entrepreneurial leadership.
This study identified the relationships between the women entrepreneurship development
and women empowerment of women through the women economic empowerment, social
empowerment and leadership capabilities. However, there is an ample scope to conduct
further study by taking more samples and additional dimensions into account that may
identify different results in the women empowerment of the SME entrepreneurs in
Bangladesh.

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