3rd INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON BUSINESS AND ...

3rd INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON BUSINESS AND 2350 ECONOMIC RESEARCH ( 3rd ICBER 2012 ) PROCEEDING 12 - 13 MARCH 2012. GOLDEN FLOWER HOTEL, BANDUNG, INDONESIA ISBN: 978-967-5705-05-2. WEBSITE: www.internationalconference.com.my

CHALLENGES FACED BY MUSLIM WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS: THE MALAYSIAN CONTEXT Cordelia Mason & Marhaini Ibrahim Universiti Kuala Lumpur Business School [email protected], [email protected] ABSTRACT What problems do women entrepreneurs, especially Muslim women entrepreneurs face in Malaysia? To answer this question, this paper seeks to determine the challenges faced by Muslim women entrepreneurs in Malaysia through a primary research. The research is prompted by the need to suggest possible solutions on how to alleviate the burden of these women in order to enhance their entrepreneurial growth. Data is obtained using a survey questionnaire and telephone interviews. The analysis of the data is carried out to identify the emerging challenges faced by women entrepreneurs in Malaysia. This study attempts to delve into the minds of Malaysian women entrepreneurs and see how they view challenges they face in running their businesses – which elements in the ecosystem of their business ventures do they view as most challenging. It is hoped that through the narrations of the findings, the voices of Malaysian women entrepreneurs would be more audible and its frequency could act as a catalyst for all stakeholders to address these pressing challenges. Instead of merely listing and ranking the responses, the ‘voices’ are coded based on the PESTLE acronym. Keywords: Women Entrepreneurship; challenges; PESTLE Analysis

INTRODUCTION The Malaysian Government strongly recognises the contribution of entrepreneurship to the Malaysian economy and has put in place various policies and support systems to enhance its growth. The whole Malaysian populace is encouraged to pursue entrepreneurial ventures , be they male or female. In the 10 Malaysian Plan, the plan for entrepreneur development has shifted from focusing on basic training and supporting small scale establishments, particularly to promote self-employment amongst disadvantaged groups and the unemployed to (1) strengthening and expanding entrepreneurship programmes for bottom 40% households regardless of ethnicity with targeted programmes for special needs groups; (2) placing greater emphasis on scaling up and promoting innovation-intensive businesses to grow Bumiputera Commercial and Industrial Community (BCIC); and (3) developing new approach of BCIC by segmenting Bumiputera companies by their business stages (source: 10MP). In the third focus, Bumiputera entrepreneurs will be categorised into micro and small enterprises, development and growth stage, and listed and mature stage companies. This differentiation has implication with regards to funding, support services and implementation agencies. As Muslims make up about a quarter of the world’s population and half of them are women (World Bank Report 2009), Dr. Zeti Akhtar Aziz, Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia stresses the importance of women’s contribution to the economy as they represent a significant human resource potential that can rise to leadership position. The active participation of Malaysian Muslim women in the economic sector has seen the significant rise in the number of women leaders in both public and private economic set-ups.


Literature survey on women entrepreneurs divulged a range of achievements, issues and concerns. Weeks and Seiler’ (2001) study on women entrepreneurs in Latin America established that women entrepreneurs play an increasingly important role in promoting growth and development; that the entrepreneurial skills potential of women is significant especially in the small and medium enterprises. What problems do women entrepreneurs, especially Muslim women entrepreneurs. face in Malaysia? As earlier mentioned in the abstract and repeated here, this paper seeks to determine the challenges faced by Muslim women entrepreneurs in Malaysia through a primary research. The research is prompted by the need to suggest possible solutions on how to alleviate the burden of these women in order to enhance their entrepreneurial growth. Data is obtained using a survey questionnaire and in-depth interviews. The analysis of the data is carried out to identify the emerging challenges faced by women entrepreneurs in Malaysia. This study attempts to delve into the minds of Malaysian women entrepreneurs and see how they view challenges they face in running their businesses – which elements in the ecosystem of their business ventures do they view as most challenging. It is hoped that through the narrations of the findings, the voices of Malaysian women entrepreneurs would be more audible and its frequency could act as a catalyst for all stakeholders to address these pressing challenges. Instead of merely listing and ranking the responses, the ‘voices’ are coded based on the PESTLE acronym. RESEARCH ON WOMEN ENTREPRENEURSHIP LITERATURE Various studies have been undertaken on the topic of entrepreneurship and one popular research topic is female entrepreneurship such as studies on factors influencing the performance of women entrepreneurs in Malaysia (Teoh and Chong, 2007); and a much earlier one on need to increase women entrepreneurs’ participation (Maimunah, 1996). In a global economy plagued by myriad perennial problems, entrepreneurs, both men and women, faced various uphill tasks and challenges. Minniti’s (2003) report on women in entrepreneurship reveals that women are 50 percent less likely to become entrepreneurs compared to men, have smaller amount of start-up capital, smaller proportion of equities, have smaller businesses, and slower company growth compared to men. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) study in the year 2005 on the issues and policies on women’s entrepreneurship in Turkey identified obstacles faced by women entrepreneurs as lack of role models, type of education, weak social position as well as lack of access to time and financing. Kumar (2006) identified 12 major problems faced by women entrepreneurs in India which include gender bias, scepticism of women’s entrepreneurial abilities, inadequate funding, conflicting roles, low access to knowledge, etc. In Nigeria, Okafor and Mordi (2010) noted that inequality and sexism are the major challenges faced by women entrepreneurs. In Sri Lanka, Ayadurai (2004) established that lack of funds is the number one constraint faced by women in war-torn areas. METHODOLOGY This study was carried out using the mixed method. Firstly a simple survey where the respondents were asked to answer two questions was distributed to the members of a Malaysian women entrepreneur association. The questionnaire were emailed through the organisation’s president who then forwarded it to their members through their social network. Only 31 of the over 200 members responded. After the responses have been categorised, the researchers called the respondents over the phone to make further clarifications. The first question requires them to list ten major challenges they face in their business. Then they are requested to choose the three most difficult challenges out of the ten they had listed earlier. The demographic data includes name(optional), years in business, type of business and number of employees.


Where applicable, the responses were coded using the PESTLE categories whereby ‘P’ stands for political, ‘E’ stands for economics, ‘S’ stands for social. ‘T’ stands for technology, ‘L’ stands for legal and ‘E’ stand for environment. Although PESTLE analysis is normally used to analyse the macroenvironment when undertaking strategic analysis (OUP,2007), in this study, the researchers used it as a tool to categorised the responses of the survey. This is done to put this simple survey one level higher in analysis. In accordance with the descriptions given in the OUP document , ‘political’ refers to government policy such as the degree of intervention in the economy. “Economic factors’ refer to any aspect which relate to interest rates, taxation change, economic growth, inflation and exchange rates – and anything that affects this such as finance. “Social factors” refer to changes in social trends which can impact on demand for a firm’s products and the availability and willingness of individuals to work i.e. relating to feelings and motivation. “Technological factors” refer to new technologies which could be used to create products and new processes. Environmental factors include changes in weather and climate change, protection of the environment and the general move towards more environmentally friendly products and processes and how this affect demand patterns and create business opportunities. Legal factors are those related to the legal environment in which firms operate. FINDINGS This section covers two major aspects which are the description of the demographic of the respondents and an elaboration of the challenges they face. The Respondents Only 31 of the about 200 members responded to the questionnaire which was distributed online through the organisation’s president. The respondents represent a few business sectors as seen in Table 1. From the table, we can see that the first nine respondents represent the training, consultancy and education industry. Respondents number 10 to 15 represent the food industry. Respondents number 16 to 20 represent the ICT industry. Number 21 to 25 are involved in the beauty industry. The rest of the respondents are involved in deep sea fishing industry, manufacturing and distribution of plantation machinery, travel agency, florist and children clothing. Their experience as business owners range from 2 to 18 years. They are generally small sized businesses ranging from a one man(‘woman’) show business to those less than 20. Only five companies have more than 20 employees with one having 134 full time employees. Note that some of the entrepreneurs’ business models involved outsourced labour especially the training consultants. The respondents are members of a women’s association where more than 98 percent of its members are Muslims. Interestingly, the findings in this initial study revealed that none of the respondents cited challenges in doing business which could be linked to religious affiliation; there was only one respondent who cited one incidence of a man discomfort doing business with ladies but it could not be established if this reluctance was based on cultural or religious ground. TABLE 1: SUMMARY OF RESPONDENTS’ TYPE OF BUSINESS, SIZE OF COMPANY AND LENGTH IN BUSINESS No 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Type of Business Training and Consultancy Training and Consultancy Tuition Centre Architecture Quantity Surveying Engineering Consultancy Music School Insurance Agency Corporate Communications Food Franchise

Years in Business 6 2 11 18 15 4 17 8 8 5

Number of Employees 2 2 (outsource trainers) 17 27 6 5 21 3 office staff 1 7


11. 12. 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Jam making Bakery Frozen food Chicken supplier Canteen operator cum caterer ICT – Solutions Provider ICT – Solutions Provider ICT - Consultancy E-business E-Business Cosmetics Cosmetics Cosmetics Beauty Consultant Massage and Spa Deep sea fishing Plantation Machinery Travel Agency Florist Children clothing Printing and advertising

5 2 3 2 7 9 12 6 2 3 17 5 12 7 9 7 3 8 13 4 11

1 3 6 8 8 7 40 4 1 Work from home 2 8 3 134 5 15 35 10 5 6 3 (Tailors –outsourced) 12

The Challenges This initial survey revealed various challenges faced by the subjects in this survey. The major challenges are financial, economic situation,, product development (technology), management of change, government regulation and processes, expansion, time management, juggling home life and business. Interesting, the issue of gender bias is not evident from the report. To get a better picture of the challenges faced by the women entrepreneurs studied, their narratives gathered from the survey and telephone interviews are outlined in the six sub-sections that follows. Challenges of Political Nature None of the respondents directly cited ‘political’ in its most popular sense of the word –e.g. political rivalry, etc, challenges in the survey. There are however a few responses which are related to public governance. Seven of the respondents face problems relating to government policies such as ‘unstable’ procedures, changes in municipal council rules and regulations, and loss of opportunities to win government bids due to ‘favouritism’. For instance, an entrepreneur in education claimed that changes in government requirements and regulations have major impacts on her operations. Sometimes, as a small franchise holder, a small change in regulation can require a much expenses which could affect her capital. When interviewed over the phone, the issue of challenges due to governance is often offered by the entrepreneurs involved in engineering related industries. For instance, the engineering consultant, the quantity surveyor, the architect and the entrepreneur producing plantation machinery all related instances of having to deal with problems relating to government policies and regulations. Challenges of Economic Nature Almost all of the respondents, 29 to be exact, listed challenges relating to economics especially within the context of finance. The following sentiments of two of the entrepreneurs is echoed in most of the other responses:


“My biggest challenge thus far is financial insufficiencies for working capital. An organization, whether profit oriented or not, needs working capital in order to execute tasks. Overhead is cost to a company. Insufficient fund leads to limited activity and gradually a decline in business.” “Money. No business, no money! Am still waiting for results of the grant!!!.” Further clarification over the phone revealed that face difficulties in financing their business ventures. At various stages of their businesses, they have encountered problems with lack of fund for business operations or working capital. Fourteen of the respondents indicated that they had to resort to borrowing from families and friends. The respondents view money as central to the success of their business. They feel caught in a catch 22 situation whereby without money they cannot promote their products and services, and without promotion their business cannot grow. In certain sectors e.g. the training and consultancy sector, the respondents do not face as much financial related challenges as they do not have high overheads and fixed cost as the company only employs one administrative staff and the trainers are all employed on part-time basis. Most expenses are dedicated to the payment of trainers, lecturers or consultants. One training consultant mentioned that she does not face any financial challenge because the overheads are low and are mostly incurred after she has secured the contracts for training. Furthermore, the use of social media and online advertising has reduced her marketing and sales especially communication activities remarkably. Those whose business require capital for research and development cited limited funds for research and development as a major challenge. The cost to comply to approval by related ministries is high and requires substantial capital outlay. Interestingly, a few respondents listed the economic crisis as a challenge in doing their business. Their rationale is an economic crises will lead to a decrease in purchasing power of the customers and therefore affect their spending patterns. Another respondent finds that the demand for her training services can be extremely unpredictable. For example, even during 2010 where there was a recovery from the prolonged economic crisis which emerged in late 2007, she was unable to secure even one project. Many respondents faced tough competition. For example, an entrepreneur in training and consulting faced challenges in securing the services of experts due to their lack of loyalty to the outsourcing company. Therefore, the consultancy firm has to compete with their competitors for the expertise. However, customer loyalty is strong as thus she does not have to do much promotional activities. An entrepreneur in technology finds it hard to manage distribution, after sales service and how to push volume business to convince because of tough competition from well-established companies. The local acceptance of local brands is also a major challenge. As small sized entrepreneurs, they do not have much budget for marketing and have to rely on the image set by bigger companies. Expansion is another challenge faced by the respondents. The crucial issue is to make decisions on whether to expand in the form of a branch or as a franchise. Most opt for the former as franchising entails more complicated documentation and higher cost outlay. However, all of the respondents, when further probed did not have a comprehensive expansion plan. In other words, expansion is normally a strategy they feel they need to resort to when their current company capacity is not able to accommodate business volume. The caterer for instance has somehow come to the conclusion there is attractive opportunity to operate two new canteens in two other locations which are about 10 kilometres and 200 kilometres away from her current business base. However, she finds difficulty to identify personnel to control and monitor the other canteens. She laments that she finds it difficult to “duplicate herself” and now is frantically looking for suitable candidates. In her current canteen she faces challenges to get labour – waiters, chefs, cleaners, etc.


The entrepreneur in oil palm plantation machinery finds it hard to manage distribution, after sales service and how to push volume business to convince the users to try her ‘solution’ which she established through research, can save up to six labourers input i.e. with the machine the harvest done by one worker is equivalent to that of six workers doing manual harvesting. Generally, the bigger players are suspicious of ‘small time innovators’, as she says it, and at most order three units only. Challenges of Social Nature For the women entrepreneurs, although they cited financial constraint as the major challenge in their business venture, the social challenges seem to also be almost at par. the In fact for more than half respondents, challenges relating to the social aspects of their lives rank the highest in this survey. The entrepreneurs between 30 to 45 year old face the most problem juggling their work and personal lives. Most provided short explanations on why they thought it is a major challenge for them. Some of the interesting ones are quoted below. A respondent confessed feeling guilty about conflicting roles. She wrote on her second biggest challenge as an entrepreneur what she termed as ‘role management’ : “When I am at work, I feel guilty of things of things unattended at home. When I am at home, I feel guilty of things unattended at work. Need to be focused and be present at all times. To solve – book my role for cluster of hours. E.g. 9am -1 p” manager role. 1pm-2pm:Mother role (check on kids). 2pm-6pm:manager role.6pm-10pm:Mother/wife role. 10pm onwards :manager role. Can be tough at times as the roles required may not be available during those clusters of time. Then I use the ‘make-up’ time. If I now have extended my manager role time, I should not feel guilty about it as I will make time to make up for mother role in another time.” Gender related challenges were also shared by the respondents during the telephone interview. One respondent cited an incident where the potential client, a middle-age man, said outright that he was uncomfortable dealing with women and requested to talk to her husband instead. As it was the first and only time she faced gender bias, the woman, who has mostly with male clients and business partners decided not to deal further with the man. She wrote: “As an entrepreneur I have to be extra strong. The social pressures I face are varied. The funniest I thing was when one man with hundreds of hectares of oil palm plantation refused to meet me and asked to talk to my husband instead. I told him my husband know nuts about my business and wished him a good day”. The entrepreneur in deep sea fishing said: “This industry is dominated by men. And most of them have the mentality that women should stay at home. So as the daughter of the boss (who is also a woman- my mother) I have to be smart in handling staff especially the fishermen.” Challenges of Technological Nature This challenge is mainly listed by respondents who are involved in businesses in sectors which utilise technology. One respondent wrote in detail about her challenges in handling technology for her business. A seasoned entrepreneur, she has ventured into various types of businesses including financial services, jewellery, plantation and now manufacturing machinery for the oil palm plantations. In the aspect of technology, she faces challenges in dealing with regulatory bodies over issues of pattern rights i.e. inability to compromise on what is considered a ‘fair deal’; and also in research and development because it takes time and is very costly. The biggest buyers for her are the smallholders. Her main challenge is to convince the smallholders of the durability of the harvesting machine as the smallholders have had unpleasant experience with the previous harvesting machine


sold by another supplier. To her, the mindset of the local customers on the quality of locally designed products is a major obstacle for those dealing in technology. For the ICT related entrepreneurs, their main challenges with technology is the rapid change in ICT hardware and software. The main threat is technology obsolescence. In fact both the ICT solution providers who develop solutions for big and small organisation find it very hard when new ICT products which form part of their solutions get into the market. At that stage price of the older versions will be marked down and if they have not completed a project, customers often argue about price differentials. These types of arguments are always annoying as sometimes clients would abandon the contracts and then they may need to pursue legal avenues, which they do not because for small sized companies legal costs have huge implications to their viability. One of the three entrepreneurs in cosmetics started from retailing cosmetics. After much trail and tribulations in trying to be an entrepreneur, she decided to produce her own line of cosmetics. An extremely successful business woman now, she has not really looked seriously at the issue of safe ingredients. Thus her investment in related technology is still rather minimal. As one who dabbles in the business from an economic perspective, her appreciation for the scientific aspect of her business is rather limited and she feels challenged when facing experts in this field. An entrepreneur involved in jam making, stated her intention to expand her business to supply her marmalade to hotels in the city. However, she faces challenges in sourcing packaging technology and has to put her ambition on hold at the moment. At present she only utilises the shredder and electric juicer to make her marmalade. The entrepreneur designing and selling children clothing faces challenges in getting consistent quality for the dresses as they outsourced the tailoring. She mentioned that she is keen to set up her own factory in order to improve the quality of her dresses. The entrepreneur in deep sea fishing laments over the uphill task of convincing her mother to invest in technology from Thailand. In her opinion, Thailand’s technology and operation processes are more advanced than Malaysia. Since she has been entrusted to man the business, she wanted to explore possible collaboration with Thai companies. Her mother does not agree to invest in the collaboration and this is a challenge for her. Legal Challenges None of the respondents mentioned legal challenges as one of their major challenges in the questionnaire. When interviewed our the phone on this issue, all mentioned that they have never faced legal issues but admitted to having problems with non-payment. Two respondents doing ICT businesses said they were not paid for some projects but they never pursued the matter through legal channels because they felt it was not worth it as they view legal charges as expensive. Environmental Challenges None of the respondents mentioned environmental issues as challenges. In fact, from the phone interviews, the respondents view environment as an opportunity instead of a challenge. The travel agent for example said there is in an increasing demand for environmental or green tourism. She has not explored that field but feels the pressure to join the band wagon as tourists from Europe, especially, are very conscious of sustainability of a green environment. For the cosmetics entrepreneurs, they also have product lines which uses Eurycoma longifolia or more commonly known among Malaysians as ‘Tongkat Ali’ as food and drink additive. All are aware that there has been complaints on the use of cheaper synthetic drugs in lieu of the additive but stressed that their products use genuine ingredients.


The entrepreneurs involved in training and consultancy as well as architecture and engineering mentioned the increasing need to address environmental issue in their businesses. However, they do not view is as a challenge. Rather, they mentioned that the problem is not environmental in nature but regulatory. The entrepreneur in plantation machinery says that her product is also a solution for the environment as it can help lessen carbon prints and she uses this as a selling point. For smallholders this positioning of her product has not much impact and she is still trying hard to sell her product using this product positioning to the bigger players who have to adhere to tougher regulations to do business globally. Other Problems The researchers face a bit of difficulty categorizing some of the responses. These we have decided to categorise as “other problem”. One is the recurring mention of “Time Management”. The respondents all reside in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. Thus life is hectic and they face ‘lots of stress’. They also mentioned challenges in prioritization. One respondent wrote: “Even though we can prioritize, certain things which do not require our urgent attention is also very important. For example, execution of an order or project always require our immediate attention to ensure it runs smoothly; therefore we tend to put off certain things like marketing/sales even though it is very important as if we don’t do it soon, then we may face cash flow problem later when the business comes in late.” Many confessed to experiencing the lack of drive to go on especially when faced with what most of them find as their biggest challenge – financial constraint. They say however that joining the association has provided them much motivation to seek support from other members who have in the space of time become friends, business partners, customers and mentors. This alleviate feelings of alienation when facing challenges like lack of self-disciplined as described by one entrepreneur as follows: “Not all things will go our way as sometimes it is quite easy to wallow in self pity (no one there to scold us, since we are our own boss, right?). So it can be a challenge to keep on doing the right thing and not focus so much on things that we can’t control. I am glad my friends in this group always encourage me to focus on the activities and not the result. For example, based on my experience, I have to meet five prospects before I can successfully close a deal. So if I need to close three deals, I need to see fifteen prospects and not be upset with the unsuccessful results among the fifteen prospects I met.” CONCLUSIONS From this study we could conclude that Muslim women in Malaysia face challenges which are both common with and different from those faced by women of the other countries as stated in the literature review. For instance, like the women in India and Sri Lanka, and Turkey the Muslim women entrepreneurs in Malaysia also face challenges relating to family commitment, operation problems, inadequate funding, and conflicting roles. The respondents did not indicate facing problems like some of those faced in Nigeria, the Middle-east and Turkey such as inequality, lack of empowerment, sexism, lack of role models, type of education, and weak social position. However, in this study, we find that the responses of the respondents suggest that they are quite sophisticated and have gone beyond the usual whine of the mindset of the lesser gender. The responses reflect a high level of maturity and business sophistication. As most, with the exception of the deep sea fishing entrepreneur who inherited the business from her mother, have started their business on their own, the confidence and drive that they possess are admirable. In the interviews, their discussion on the challenges they face were made with the mindset of “these are things I must


go through to achieve what I want” rather than “ I am going to fail because of these barriers”. Some possible reasons for this could be their affiliation with the association, strong government support from the government and their general lack of interest to be ‘mere workers’. From the telephone interviews, we observed that the respondents, at this point, portray high self-efficacy and motivation to be entrepreneurs. Thus, to conclude, the respondents face varying degree of challenges in all six areas which constitute the categories used for analysis – political, economic, social, technology, legal and environment. It is also concluded the study did not gather any responses on challenges faced by the responses which stem from their ethnic and religious affiliations. IMPLICATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH This initial study could be used to determine the items which could be categorised under the PESTLE acronym for the purpose of a larger study involving women entrepreneurs in Malaysia from the major ethnic groups. The in-depth telephone interviews also suggest the possibility for research which could be used as a input for writing case studies for the major industries in Malaysia. These case studies could be used as course materials for business and management programmes.


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