The Determinants of the Success of Women Entrepreneurs of a Developing Nation a Systematic Journal Review

Abstract

Women's economic engagement is essential for the development of a healthy nation. Women entrepreneurs, particularly in developing nations, play an important role in creating jobs, wealth, poverty reduction, human development, education, health, and nation-building. In the Sri Lankan setting, women face several hurdles when carrying out any economic activity or doing any entrepreneurial endeavour. Due to societal and cultural standards, women entrepreneurs face a number of socioeconomic and other challenges. There are numerous numbers of studies published on factors that influence women entrepreneurs’ success where this research aim is in appraising, summarizing, comparing, and contrasting the existing studies in a single place and build a coherent theoretical framework that identifies the influential factors on the success of women entrepreneurs in Sri Lankan context. The methods applied to detect and appraise published reviews systematically. The process of identifying and appraising all published reviews of 21, is accompanied by an inductive approach. The systematic journal review outcome is presented based on the patterns identified through the different viewpoints provided by various researchers who have conducted research in different contexts. The common influential factors on the success of women entrepreneurs are identified as 1) Financial factors, 2) Government factors, 3) Socio-cultural factors, 4) Personal factors, and 5) Psychological factors. Further, the research confirmed factors which were poorly stressed by the previous researchers such as 1) Resource accessibility, 2) Gender-related factors, 3) Managerial skills and 4) Human capital are also needed to be further recognized.