In Nigeria, there are more of male entrepreneurs than female entrepreneurs. Are you wondering why? Below are the factors responsible for the difference:
Personality Traits
Most woman do not possess personality traits that encourage entrepreneurial investment decisions. Many women lack risk personality trait: Risk Personality means the perceived probability of receiving the reward associated with success of a proposed situation, which required by an individual and before subjecting oneself to the consequences associated with failure, the alternative situation provided less rewards as well as less severe consequences than the proposed situation. Risk Propensity represents an individual orientation, behavior towards taking chances in a decision making. We know that entrepreneurship involves risk taking, so individuals who have personality traits with high risk propensity are more likely to venture into entrepreneurial business enterprises and with higher risks. Women are more often than not concerned about consequences of failure than benefits of success thereby affecting their decision to take entrepreneurial risk. Read Effects Of Personality Traits On Entrepreneurial Investment Decisions
Lack Of Interest By Female Gender
Most women prefer paid job than self-employment. They don’t want to stress themselves with the challenges of starting and running personal business. They are more conservative than adventurous.
Gender Inequality
Gender inequality affects entrepreneurship development in Nigeria. More men are given opportunities in entrepreneurial space than women. The females are not encouraged to aspire and attain greater heights. Most entrepreneurial business enterprises are classified as men professions. In Nigeria, it’s believed that a woman’s place is in the kitchen and in “the other room” (bedroom). Both genders are not given equal opportunities to thrive on entrepreneurship development as well as in other human endeavours — it’s usually skewed to favour the male gender.
Culture
Many Nigerian cultures either forbids or does not encourage woman to aspire to having their own businesses. In some places especially in Northern Nigeria, girls are given out in marriage as soon as they develop into womanhood, they are denied access to education or vocation/ trade, and they are expected to be full house wives, depending on their husbands to meet their family and personal needs. Industrious women are most times mistaken to be ambitious and wouldn’t be submissive to a man. In Igbo language and in some other tribes, women do not have access to land. You will infer with me that land is an important factor of production — without land production can’t take place.
Skills Gap (Low skills of the female gender)
Generally, there is entrepreneurial skills gap in Nigeria but it’s preponderant in the female gender. Many women lack the basic and necessary skills needed for entrepreneurship in Nigeria. They are mostly denied right to education or vocational training as a result of gender inequality and/ or culture. The female gender are not also helping themselves to develop themselves to acquire the necessary entrepreneurial skills due to their lack of interest in entrepreneurship.
Access To Funding
Funding is a general difficulty in entrepreneurial business venture in Nigeria, but the female gender find it more difficult accessing funding than their male counterparts. Reasons being that most females don’t have collateral to secure the loans — in many Nigerian cultures, women don’t hold or own land. Their capability to run successful business is always in doubt. But this is untrue. We have woman who are doing excellently well in business management. So financial institutions consider giving loans to female entrepreneurs as high risk. Most property owners and managers don’t like renting/ leasing out their property to a woman unless the woman has male figure to stand by her.
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