Abstract— This paper tries to study the challenges faced by the Muslim women entrepreneurs in Malaysian SMEs. At present, only 15.9% of businesses are owned by women entrepreneurs. This is far way behind of what has the Government of Malaysia targeted in 2011 that is 30%. The finalized questionnaires were distributed by post to 250 Muslim women entrepreneurs in Malaysian SMEs by using simple random sampling technique. The response rate is 44% which is good. It is found out that the most frequent type of challenges faced by the respondents are lack of finance (79.2%), lack of demand (50.9%) and location problem (50.9%). Meanwhile, their proposed solutions to the challenges are a mix of observing their religion (to give tithe and alms, to do recommendatory prayers and to hire orphans), doing business (to have good relationship with customers, businesswomen organizations, suppliers, competitors and workers, to obtain more information on business development and personal (to apply work life balance).
Index Terms— Challenges, entrepreneurs, women, Muslim, Malaysia.
A. G. A. Ilhaamie is with Department of Syariah and Management, Academy of Islamic Studies, University of Malaya, Malaysia (e-mail: ilhaamie@yahoo.com).
B. Siti Arni is with Department of Siasah Syar’iyyah, Academy of Islamic Studies, University of Malaya, Malaysia (e-mail: sitiarni@um.edu.my).
C. H. Rosmawani is with Department of Business Strategy and Policy, Faculty of Business and Accountancy, University of Malaya, Malaysia (email: wani@um.edu.my).
M. Hassan Al-Banna is with Department of Human Resource Management Defense, Faculty of Defense Management and Studies, University of National Defense Malaysia, Malaysia (e-mail: addity@gmail.com).
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Cite: A. G. A. Ilhaamie, B. Siti Arni, C. H. Rosmawani, and M. Hassan Al-Banna, " Challenges of Muslim Women Entrepreneurs in Malaysian SMEs," International Journal of Innovation, Management and Technology vol. 5, no. 6, pp. 428-433, 2014.