FACTORS INFLUENCING WOMEN’S INVOLVEMENT IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN MALAYSIA

Recognizing the importance of women’s involvement in entrepreneurship activities, wide array of research perspectives have been conducted on the issue in Malaysia and other developing countries. Thus, women’s involvement in entrepreneurship have become an important topic arouses the interest of policy makers and researchers in the economic sectors. In Malaysia, the participation of women in entrepreneurship is growing in line with the government’s commitments to produce more women in the field than ever before. It has been argued that their contributions to the field have strengthened the economic sectors performance as well as their families’ incomes. There are many factors influencing the involvement of women in entrepreneurship activities. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the factors behind this participation. Using a qualitative method, semistructured interviews were conducted on 15 women respondents in Kuala Terengganu, the capital city of Terengganu, Malaysia. The interviews covered various factors influencing the participation of these women in their entrepreneurship activities. The results of the study show that there were four factors influencing active involvement of the informants in entrepreneurship activities; (1) family heritage business and exposure, (2) choices to change family fortunes, (3) opportunity to increase family income and (4) interests and appeals of entrepreneurship cultures. All of these factors are discussed in this paper.