Investigating Socio Cultural Factors Affecting People to be Entrepreneurs And Venturing New Business in the Context of Indonesian Women Society A Research Proposal (original) (raw)

Women represent a half of the world’s population and their role nowadays is significantly important because of the contribution to the society. GEM (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor) found there were around 126 million of women starting new business within 67 countries, and around 98 million of them running established business (GEM, 2011), even women participation in entrepreneurial activities differs markedly from men counterpart, and among women in different economies and regions. Women entrepreneurship worldwide is also being a focus of attention of GEM research to measure their activities, aspirations and the attitudes in entrepreneurship. GEM conducts entrepreneurship research within hundred countries in the world and divides research into regions. Indonesia is one of the nations that is involved in GEM research and is categorized as in Asian region. Indonesian is well known as dominated by Muslim society. Muslim is individuals whose religion is Islam. Their Holy book is Quran and Mohammad is The Prophet (messenger). The Prophet’s wife, Khadija was a successful business woman. By using this example, along with verses from Quran, women are supported to work but in fact, the representation of women in entrepreneurial activity, formal small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in several nations dominated by Muslim (such as in Middle East) is the lowest in the world (IFC & McKinsey, 2011). These facts of course attract attention to get the reasons behind the cases. One of the most unique characteristic of women entrepreneurship especially in a developing country is that women’s work is significantly impacted by socio cultural (Al-Dajani & Marlow, 2010). The findings suggest a considerable socio cultural impact but self-confidence and persistence are playing in fostering entrepreneurship for women to overcome the barriers.