Identification of barriers to entrepreneurship of female household heads covered by Tehran welfare organization

Abstract

One of the important tasks of social helpers is empowerment of vulnerable groups. One of these vulnerable groups is female household heads. One of the practices that can help empowering of them is to encourage female household heads to financial independence. Entrepreneurship is something that can lead to financial independence of female household heads. Moreover, entrepreneurship can lead to better mental and social health of this vulnerable group. The first step in empowering female household heads through entrepreneurship is to identify their obstacles and entrepreneurship problems. Because by identification of these barriers it can be done more appropriate measures in order to empower them. So, the aim of the present study is to identify entrepreneurship barriers of female household heads covered by Welfare Organization in Tehran. The method of the current study is survey. The statistical population of this research is all female household heads covered by Welfare Organization in Tehran that 350 of them were selected randomly.In order to collect data in this research, researcher-built questionnaire was used. In this research, the face validity and content aspect of the questionnaire were confirmed and reliability coefficient was obtained 0.81 using Cronbach’s alpha indicating desirable reliability of research questionnaire. The questionnaires were completed through self-creativity and then data were analyzed using SPSS software. Among problems that women encountered with them, the first ten ones are respectively the loss of fund to begin a job, existence of strictly official rules, gender discrimination and ignoring the ability of women by the society and responsible organizations, ignoring women in management affairs, over-concern about paying back the loans, emphasis on having personal fund instead of borrowing it from others, loss of pawn in order to get a loan, lack of proper support by government and governmental organizations, few facilities to begin a job by sponsor organizations, and unsuitable behavior of some organizations due to promotion of male-dominating in the society that statistically meaningful difference in prioritizing of these barriers was seen (p < 0.05). Considering the findings of the current research, the programs in order to support female household heads economically and special facilities for them can provide their entrepreneurship basis. Also, gender discriminations against women especially female household heads can be decreased through acculturating using media and national media. The findings of the current research can be useful for social helpers, sponsor organizations and policymakers in direction of empowering the female household heads.