Women Entrepreneurs in Bahrain: Motivations and Barriers

The purpose of this paper is to examine the motivations underlying decisions by women in Bahrain to set up a business and the challenges confronted. The analysis is based on a survey of 40 male and 40 female respondents. Descriptive statistics and T and ANOVA tests were applied to assess the relative importance of motivational factors, differences in perspective by gender and the impact of age. The results reveal that profit achievement is the most powerful motivational factor for business women in Bahrain. Barriers include lack of belief in their abilities, absence of support from the government, insufficient market information, and an economy dominated by a few large companies. Due to resource constraints and problems of contacting women in Bahrain, the sample size was restricted to 170 participant organizations. Nevertheless, this was deemed sufficient to carry out the research study and the results provide a rare insight into the entrepreneurial spirit amongst Bahraini women. Bahrain is particularly interesting because it is regarded a moderate Arab country with a mix of Arab and European business practices. To the authors’ knowledge, no other study has explicitly focused on the motivations of Bahrain business women.