les cahiers du mecas
Volume 10, Numéro 1, Pages 80-90
2014-12-31

Socio-economic Determinants Of Female Entrepreneurship In Algeria

Authors : Metaiche Tahir Fatima . Metaiche Mohammed El Amine . Hadri Khadidja .

Abstract

Until the eighties entrepreneurship was generally reserved for men, only, due to the traditional, cultural, social, political and legal barriers confronting women to penetrate this domain. However, during the last three decades, in several countries, the contribution of women entrepreneurs in their national economies has been rapidly increasing, and since then they are playing an important role to improve the entrepreneurship not only in the sectors which are traditionally occupied by women but also those where the female participation is recent. Despite the upward trend observed worldwide, as well as some of the MENA countries, the percentage of female entrepreneurs is still very slight in Algeria, either in relation to the percentage of male entrepreneurs or in relation to the proportion of women throughout population. They represent only 3.2% of the total number of entrepreneurs. This paper examines the socio-economic determinants of female entrepreneurship in Algeria, where the aim of this work is to test the existence of those determinants in Algeria, in order to be able to overcome the existing problems that face the female entrepreneurs in Algeria. Our research starts with an introduction that highlights the importance of female entrepreneurship for the whole economic performance of developing countries, the first part of our paper is based on the theoretical background of entrepreneurship, and female entrepreneurship, in this part also, we provide a review of the literature of female entrepreneurship, while the second part of this paper is illustrates the methodological procedures followed in this study, which is based on an exploratory study conducted on a set of 231 female owned/managed. We use the logistic regression to distinct between the main characteristics and variables affecting the female entrepreneurship phenomenon in Algeria. However; this investigation determined the brakes obstacle and engines that may shape the phenomenon of female entrepreneurship in Algeria.

Keywords

entrepreneurship, female entrepreneurship, women entrepreneurs, obstacles to entrepreneurship, Algeria.