Low Income Household (LIH); Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs); KnowledgeBased Industries (KBI); Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

Initiated in the early 1980s, small businesses and entrepreneurship have received the utmost interest from policymakers, especially from academicians, due to their significant contribution to job creation and innovation [1]. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are crucial elements in contributing to the economic growth and development of the country. SMEs contribute an average of 95 per cent to economic growth and between 60 to 70 per cent of jobs in most OECD countries. This leads to a reduction in the unemployment rate [2,3]. Similarly, in Malaysia, SMEs are considered the backbone of the economy, representing 97.2 per cent of the overall business establishments in 2020 [4]. On the micro-enterprise level, it contributes to the dynamics and development of the business communities and entities. Micro-enterprises are concentrated primarily in lowincome and low productivity activities, especially in petty trades and services in competitive markets. In many countries, women who could be categorised as poor and experience poverty operate many of these enterprises. Therefore, in many developing countries, women entrepreneurs represent a crucial element of these business communities. Based on the labour market’s perspective, advancing women’s entrepreneurship in developing countries acts dives the creation of a productive workforce. In contrast, from the social perspective, these women entrepreneurs are crucial factors in reducing and eliminating poverty in society. Given this, a thorough understanding and analysis of their characteristics can help develop successful entrepreneurship policies for economic growth, competitiveness, and, most importantly, social justice and equality [5]. The relevance of the research pertaining to women entrepreneurship in today’s economy is the motivating factor behind this study.

Many studies were examining the unique characteristics of women entrepreneurs and whether these qualities influence the sustainability of women-owned businesses in micro enterprise [6]. Based on previous studies, Knowledge-Based Industries (KBI) and manufacturing were two sectors that did not appear to attract as many women entrepreneurs. These two sectors, which are key sectors driving the country’s growth and innovation, attracted only small percentage of women entrepreneurs [7,8]. Similarly, Department of Statistic Malaysia [4], indicated that, the majority of women entrepreneurs involved in service sector were almost more than 50 per cent out of total number of women-owned established sector. This figure shows that most of women entrepreneurs still prefer less risky business compared riskier sector such as manufacturing that will contribute towards higher Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In addition, previous studies found that women-owned enterprises gained fewer profits and business survival is shorter than male-owned businesses [9]. In view of this, there is a need to study the psychological characteristic among women entrepreneur that were identified by vast literature to have influence on entrepreneurial success as well as business sustainability [10]. As a result, the purpose of this paper is to explore the psychological characteristic among women entrepreneur in micro-enterprise by focusing on psychological women empowerment. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. First, the brief review of the entrepreneurial success definition. Second, the overview of the concept of psychological women empowerment and how does it relate to women entrepreneur that represent as a crucial driver in the stimulation of success. Next, we present the methodology employed such as the instrument used and data analysis procedure involved. Finally, based on the result generated, we make a conclusion on how the study conducted may assist the future studies in entrepreneurship stream.

Women entrepreneurial success

Entrepreneurial success is a phenomenon understood by implication or context. It is agreed that society benefits from a successful entrepreneur. However, Casson [11] cautioned against the absence of a precise definition of entrepreneurial success. Many researchers highlighted the lack of mutual agreement on how to determine the measurement and indicators of a successful entrepreneur [12]. Batool, et al. [13] also used the determination of criterion for success proposed by Brockhaus [14] when the business continued to exist three years after the owner created the company to differentiate between successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs. In contrast, the definition provided by Witt [15] is consistent with Cliff [16], who defined a success measure as the completion of the idea and planning phase. For instance, the founder has moved from idea development and business planning to business start-up. With respect to the empirical argument by previous studies, hence, therefore this study treat business survival and success as two related where the business managed to sustain within the first three years after its formation due to its liability of newness as suggested by Freeman et al. [17].

Concept of psychological women empowerment and women entrepreneurial success

The psychological women empowerment concept has been widely discussed in various studies and continues to receive significant attention in the entrepreneurship field through social exclusion and social inequality [18,19] making it more exciting to study. According to Kabeer [20], East [21] and Carr [22], empowerment is a process instead of a goal and is most directly applied to those who lack power through peripheral social inequality and discrimination. Empowerment is the expansion of people’s ability to make strategic life choices in a context where this ability was previously denied [23]. Similarly, Carr [22] and East [21] stressed that empowerment is a process instead of a goal and mostly directly applied to those who lack of power through peripheral, social inequality and discrimination. Vast literature had indicated that the concept of empowerment best suited women rather man because man as an individual generally holds a favoured position in patriarchal contexts. Thomas and Velthouse [24] mentioned women empowerment as one of the psychological elements and called this the psychological women empowerment that increased task motivation demonstrated in employees’ cognitions about their role in doing the job. These cognitions are said to enclose meaning or the fit between an individual’s values and work role; competence or belief in one’s ability to perform the job; self-determination, or a sense of autonomy on the job; and impact, or a sense of influencing job outcomes.

    Furthermore, the same term of psychological empowerment was also used by Oladipo [25], which refers to an individual’s cognitive state characterized by a sense of perceived control, competence, and goal internalization. Recently, Chakraborty and Biswal [26] investigated dimension of psychological empowerment among women entrepreneurs. The study conducted netnography in the Twitter to discover whether entrepreneurship is associated with integration in business life. The study reported that the women entrepreneur set up their businesses for reasons such as goal internationalization, perceived control, perceived competency, and self-esteem. In fact, women entrepreneur with empowerment characteristic were not afraid of failure in business and may lead to business sustainability [27]. This implied that empowerment was related to business success. In addition, previous study also proved that the location where women had high spirit, self- confidence, and capability to involve in business indicated higher rate of entrepreneur [28]. Huis et al. [29], Okyireh MAA and Simpeh KN [30] perceived the problem in developing the concept and analytical core of empowerment due to lack of agreement among the researchers. Consequently, using broader definitions of empowerment, Al-Dajani and Marlow [31] suggested that women’s empowerment is a continuous cycle involving abilities enhancement to control choices, decision and actions based on seven construct namely:

i. Increase awareness and knowledge: Women acquire motivation for their social change through their increase awareness and knowledge gained from their experience.

ii. Improve welfare: The entrepreneurship involvement provides economic gains among women that were directed towards improving their family welfare in terms of better education and health care for children.

iii. Economic independence: The income generated by the home-based enterprises was crucial in supporting the limited wages available to husbands and fathers as well as to release poverty. Moreover, this source of additional income enables women to gain some power in determining how the income should be spent and invested back to the family.

iv. Community organizing: Women with empowerment characteristic has the capability to find acceptable channels to generate income in the face of restraint and regarded the situation as opportunity that motivate them to reach outside of their family and local community.

v. Accountability and responsibility: Women business owner has confidence in making decision when they posit positive self-identity. There is high tendency to play a leadership role within her family and immediate community.

vi. Leadership: The awareness and understanding of women’s role in society motivate them to lead initiatives for community especially among the same gender to improve their life.

vii. Self-identity: Women who has empowerment indicate positive self-identity and become a role model for other women.

Therefore, based on the above discussion lead to the proposed hypothesis:

i. H0: There is no relationship between psychological women empowerment and women entrepreneurial success

ii. HA: There is a relationship between psychological women empowerment and women entrepreneurial success.

This study is quantitative method. The survey conducted was self-administered questionnaire. Data collection procedure covers one year. A total of 500 out of 946 women entrepreneurs engaged in micro-enterprise more than three years were participated in this study voluntarily. However, there were 410 (82%) being valid response. The sample frame was provided by Social Welfare Department of Malaysia which is the agency involves to assist low income household or also known as B40 group. This sample considered as appropriate for the study based on the definition of entrepreneurial success that was highlighted previously. The sample selection for each state in Malaysia was derived from proportionate stratified random sampling approach based on the following formula:

Proportionate Stratified Random Sampling Formula:

nh=(Nh/N)*n

Whereby:

nh=Sample size for h^th stratum

Nh=Population size for h^th stratum

N=Size of the entire population

n=Size of the entire sampl

The instruments used have been adapted from previous studies [31-33] with some modification for appropriate context of present study. The set of questionnaire was prepared in dual language which are Malay and English. In order to ensure the consistency of the language, inter-translator checked was implemented by the expert from higher learning institutions in Malaysia. The questions have been stated as sentences that have to be answered by respondents in terms of their agreement rate based on a 5- point Likertscale for all items. The Likert-scale is used to construed between how strongly disagree to strongly agree a respondent was, with the statement on the scale (1=strongly disagree; 5=strongly agree).

The total of 18 items to measure psychological women empowerment is divided into seven dimensions as follows:

i. Increase awareness (two items: eg., “I believe that I have to do as I think not as what my family says,” I believe that if I do not help myself, nobody will help me.”)

ii. Improve welfare (four items: eg., “It is important for me to gain confidence, share experience related to my work and to gain presence in the broader community”, “Many people respect me and come for advice,” “I am very active in the community and that encourages me to do more,” “I help many adolescents with their homework.”)

iii. Economic independence (two items: eg., “I always wanted to have my own work and I have never looked back,” “I could bring in more money through my business to support my family.”)

iv. Community organizing (two items: eg., “I have to find solution helping those women who are running business at home like me,” “As my business grew beyond my dreams, I employed the other local people to work with me.”)

v. Accountability and responsibility (two items: eg., “I am not only responsible for my family, but also for the entire woman I subcontract to and their families,” “I always think that what would happen to local women if I do not provide job for them.”)

vi. Leadership (three items: eg., “If I do not change things for myself, no one will change them for me,” “I have to lead the change in my family,” “Without my work, my family could not afford to have a better life.”)

vii. Self-identity (three items: eg., “To stay ahead of my life, I have to be very creative,” “It is not enough to have good quality items, but they have to be unique too,” “It is my responsibility to have my own identity of product and keep people interested in this.”)

viii. In addition, the measurement of women entrepreneurial success involved one dimension which is business sustainability that consists of six items (eg: “I am personally satisfied with my life and business,” “I do only that which I want to do in my life and business,” “I continually grow my business more than three years,” “I exceed the business goals that I set out to achieve in founding at least one business,” “I received public recognition from others for instance; award, remunerated board seats, speaker invitation,” “I build a business sustainable beyond my personal involvement.”

Data were analysed using SPSS Version 23. The linear regression analysis was conducted as the main statistical procedure for examining the relationship between psychological women empowerment and women entrepreneurial success. However, since this study involved the psychological characteristic theory, also known as personality theory, a large number of observed factors that are thought to reflect latent factors may have the tendency to occur. Therefore, as a preliminary step to linear regression analysis, the factorial analysis with KMO and Barlett’s test of Sphericity and Varimax rotation was performed to determine whether the construct is measureable according to psychological women empowerment and women entrepreneurial success.

(Table 1) presents the finding of the KMO test and Bartlett’s test of Sphericity for the variable of psychological women empowerment. Based on the table, analysis indicates that the KMO test for 18 items of psychological women empowerment is 0.890, which is more than the suggested 0.50 value by Kaiser [34]. The Bartlett’s test of Sphericity analysis indicates a significant value of p-value (p=0.000) is less than significant level (α=0.05), which indicates that the correlation among factors is sufficient for the analysis.

Table 1: KMO and Bartlett’s test of psychological women empowerment.

To avoid over determination of the factors, only those factors with Eigen value less than one were considered. (Table 2) indicates that the variables related to psychological women empowerment can be grouped into three main factors when the Eigen-value is more than 1.00 and the variance contribution of more than 5% [35]. The Eigen-value for Factor 1 is 7.24, Factor 2 is 1.59 and Factor 3 is 1.15. All three factors contribute 55.47% to the changes in the variance as a whole. The highest percentage of the variance are contributed by Factor 1 (40.23%), followed by Factor 2 (8.85%) and Factor 3 (6.39%).

Table 2: Eigen values and total variance of psychological women empowerment.

Source: Extraction method: Principal component analysis.

(Table 3) provides 18 items of psychological women empowerment used in this study before rotation, and (Table 4) (Rotated Component Matrix) indicates that all the items fulfil beyond the minimum requirement of loading factors (0.33) represents 10% of total variance changes for the factor. However, after the varimax rotation, five items were found in more than one factor (components). These items must be considered unsuitable and should be excluded from the instrument for further analysis [35]. In other words, by using factorial analysis, three factors construct was developed to represent psychological women empowerment, and out of the 18 items analysed, five items have been eliminated from the instrument. The items involved were PWE3, PWE4, PWE5, PWE7 and PWE16 (Table 5).

Table 3: Items of Psychological Women Empowerment.

Source: *Items eliminated after varimax rotation.

Table 4: Rotated component matrix of psychological women empowerment.

Source: Extraction method: Principal component analysis. Rotation method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.^a

(Table 5) indicates three factors were extracted after the rotation was conducted and after eliminating the five items. Factor 1 consists of six items (PWE13, PWE6, PWE9, PWE10, PWE 8, and PWE 11), Factor 2 consists of four items (PWE15, PWE17, PWE12 and PWE18) and Factor 3 consists of three items (PWE1, PWE2 and PWE14). All items in each factor were inspected thoroughly and were labelled according to their suitability: Factor 1 (Leadership, Improve Welfare and Community Organizing), Factor 2 (SelfIdentity and Responsibility) and Factor 3 (Increase Awareness).

Table 5: Factorial analysis of psychological women empowerment.

A reliability test based on factorial analysis must be conducted once more on the new factors developed. The main purpose of this test is to ensure the stability and internal consistency of the instrument. (Table 6) indicates the reliability test analysis of Cronbach’s Alpha for psychological women empowerment. The analysis conducted indicates that the reliability value for Factor 1 is 0.803, Factor 2 is 0.708 and Factor 3 is 0.725. The total value of Cronbach’s Alpha is 0.866. Thus, the result proved that the instrument is acceptable and good because the Cronbach’s Alpha value is between 0.7 and 0.8 [36].

Table 6: Reliability analysis of psychological women empowerment.

(Table 7) shows the finding of the KMO test and Bartlett’s test of Sphericity for the variable of women entrepreneurial success. Based on the table, the KMO test for six women entrepreneurial success items is 0.746, which is more than 0.50. Moreover, the analysis of Bartlett’s test of Sphericity indicates a significant value where the p-value (p=0.000) is less than the significant level (α=0.05), which indicates that the correlation among the factors is sufficient for the analysis.

Table 7: KMO and Bartlett’s test of women entrepreneurial success.

(Table 8) indicates that women entrepreneurial success variables are grouped into two main factors where the Eigen-value is more than 1.00 and variance contribution are more than 5%. The Eigen-value for Factor 1 is 2.6, and Factor 2 is 1.022. These two factors contribute 60.31% changes in variance as a whole. The highest percentage of variance is contributed by Factor 1 (43.28%), followed by Factor 2 (17.03%).

Table 8: Eigen-values and total variance of women entrepreneurial success.

Source: Extraction method: Principal component analysis.

(Table 9) indicates six women entrepreneurial success items used in this study before rotation and (Table 10) (Rotated Component Matrix) indicates that all items fulfil beyond the minimum requirement of loading factors (0.33) indicated by chi-square, this value represents 10% of total variance changes for the factor. After Varimax rotation is conducted, none of the items is found in more than one factor (components). Hence, no item should be excluded from the instrument, and all items are suitable for further analysis.

Table 9: Items of women entrepreneurial success.

Table 10: Rotated component matrix of women entrepreneurial success.

Source: Extraction method: Principal component analysis. Rotation method: Varimax with kaiser normalization.

(Table 11) indicates the two factors that are extracted after the rotation are conducted. Factor 1 comprises four items (WES 2, WES 3, WES 4 and WES 1), while two items are under Factor 2 (WES 5 and WES 6). All items in each factor were thoroughly inspected and were labelled according to their suitability, which comprises Factor 1 (Business Sustainability and Career Satisfaction) and Factor 2 (Perceived Career Achievement and Social Recognition).

Table 11: Factorial analysis of women entrepreneurial success.

(Table 12) indicates the reliability test analysis of Cronbach’s Alpha for women entrepreneurial success. Based on the analysis conducted, the reliability value for Factor 1 is 0.680 and Factor 2 is 0.651. Therefore, the total value of Cronbach’s Alpha is 0.736. Thus, the result proved that the instrument is satisfied and is acceptable for further analysis because the Cronbach’s Alpha value is between 0.65 and 0.79.

Table 12: Reliability analysis of women entrepreneurial success.

Based on the descriptive statistic conducted as indicates in (Table 13), the result found that the majority of respondents’ age are between 36 until 40 years (45.6%), received education at Certificate/Diploma/STPM level (43.9%), running their business around 9-11 years (35.6%) and conducting two types of business (55.4%).

Table 13: Result of descriptive statistic.

(Table 14) indicates the result of linear regression analysis. The analysis found that there is significant positive relationship between psychological women empowerment and women entrepreneurial success at the significance level of 0.05 (p=0.003, sig. p<0.05) which indicates that the higher the psychological women empowerment trait leads to the higher women entrepreneurial success. The R square value between the variables is 0.309, which means that 30.9% (r=0.556) variation in dependent variable (women entrepreneurial success) is explained by the changes of the independent variable (psychological women empowerment). Thus, this study rejected the null hypothesis and accepted the alternative hypothesis. Therefore, the equation can be presented as following:

                                                                                              Y=2.6+0.17 (PWE)

Table 14: Result of linear regression between psychological women empowerment and women entrepreneurial success.

Source: Dependent variable: Women entrepreneurial success

This study focus on the psychological empowerment of women entrepreneurs that influence the micro enterprise sustainability. The finding showed that psychological women empowerment significantly influences women entrepreneurial success. Thus, this finding demonstrated that these women entrepreneurs had a clear purpose for setting up their business, high level of autonomy, independence and awareness in knowledge sharing with their community. Furthermore, the finding also proved that the women entrepreneur has the ability to control, managing as well as sustaining their business. This finding in accordance with previous studies such as Sugiyanto et al. [37], Chakraborty & Biswal [26] and Sengar et al. [38]. The finding reported by Sengar et al. [38] also pointed out that women entrepreneur with psychological empowerment characteristic had the urged to learn new business and are not afraid of failure. Similarly, Chakraborty U and Biswal SK [26] also demonstrated that women entrepreneur who choose to embark in entrepreneurship were highly motivated to improve their family life and lead initiative to other women in releasing poverty issue. This finding offers evidence that women in low income household engaged in entrepreneurship and sustain their business feel much empowered. These outcomes provide important insight for the entrepreneurship stream since research in this context has become increasingly necessary due to the limited studies conducted especially among women entrepreneur in micro enterprise. In addition, the finding may assist Social Welfare Department specifically in designing and implementing an entrepreneurship development programme, especially for women to reduce the consequences of business crises among women entrepreneurs operating micro-businesses in Malaysia. This study has several limitations. First, this study was performed among women entrepreneur listed in Social Welfare Department in Malaysia only. Therefore, to enrich analyses of empowerment and women entrepreneurship, it is recommended for the future research to explore empowerment and entrepreneurship relationship among women in diverse sector of economies because different population may yield different result from those reported in this study. Second, this study was conducted in limited time frame. Future research may examine the longitudinal effect especially after disaster on the business sustainability. Third, the exploration on different dimension of psychological women empowerment instead of seven dimensions used in the study would be one of the concern for the future research as well. Finally, since the independent variable used in this study (psychological women empowerment) only contribute 30.9% to the dependent variable (women entrepreneurial success), hence, it is indicated that 69.1% contributed by other factors would be interesting for the future research to investigate.

The authors thank to Social Welfare Department of Malaysia for the significant support in providing the valuable data of women entrepreneurs. Special thanks to editors and reviewers for their encouraging feedback and helpful guidelines provided in preparing this paper for publication.

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