| dc.description.abstract | Women represent a greater proportion largely due to their ascribed and acquired role, which is accentuated by socio-cultural orthodoxy with a concomitant vulnerability to deprivation, intimidation, and extreme suffering. Consequently due to this, majority of these women are forced into the informal economy, which exacerbate through poverty and vulnerability. Due to this problem there is lack of opportunity in terms of credit, training and networking to most women entrepreneur performance in their businesses.
The objective of this study is to try to alleviate this problem through identifying the credit availability of women entrepreneur performance, second objective will be to establish how networking influences women entrepreneur performance and thirdly is going to be determined by how training influences women entrepreneur performance. The methodology of the study that has been used is descriptive survey design which includes both qualitative and quantitative approaches and the Persons Correlation.
This design was selected because it allowed the researcher to study relationships with minimal bias and maximal reliability. The descriptive survey study sampled 20 Women Entrepreneurs Funded by the WEF program. The questionnaire had been piloted in the Ngong Division area mainly Kiserian sub-location and Ongata Rongai sub- location. The data collected was summarised using Statistical Packages for Social Sciences and analysis done using the same package to produce frequencies and calculate the correlations used to represent the findings.
The result from the study indicate that credit opportunity, training opportunity and networking opportunity influence women entrepreneur performance in terms of their investment and their income rates. There was also a high correlation noted between women managerial experience and the level of education, women who have one through basic education fared well in women entrepreneur performance in terms of managing the premises. A theme which has emerged from this research is that women may be more risk-averse, leading them to prefer using internal funds or 'love money'.
There was the conclusion that constraints and barriers can be summarized as credit availability, networking opportunity and training opportunities. The study thus recommends improved innovation and participation of women in entrepreneurial activities and effective management of the fund. It was however recommended that Women Enterprise Fund (WEF) will only be effective with improved innovation and participation of women in entrepreneurial activities and effective management of the fund and also was found out that effectiveness largely depends on the criteria used in appointing the advisory board. | en_US |
