Abstract:
This study focused on small scale enterprises (SSEs) owned and/or managed by women. The objective of this research was to establish the characteristics of women entrepreneurs and evaluate the magnitude and direction of their influence on the performance of SSEs in Urban- Kenya. The research further sought out find the influence of family characteristics, economic characteristics and socio-cultural characteristics on the performance of women owned and / or managed business enterprises. It also assessed the level of support framework’s influence on performance and the correlation between entrepreneurship scorecard and performance of SSEs. The research was based on a random sample from industries of SSEs in the city council wards in Nairobi East. Enterprise characteristics and its antecedents were measured through a Likert scale of five. Descriptive research design was used to explain and predict relationships between the independent and dependent variables. Data was generated through the use of questionnaires. The data collected was analyzed by use of descriptive and inferential statistical tools. Findings from the research suggest that there is a negative but significant relationship between family characteristics and performance and between social cultural characteristics and performance further, the study found a positive and significant relationship between financial management and access to credit and the performance and between technology & innovation and performance, entrepreneurship skills and performance respectively. The study observed that support frame work and business planning had a positive though insignificant relationship to performance respectively. Additionally this study found a negative and insignificant relationship of the balanced scorecard to performance. This was due to ignorance of the women entrepreneurs on the application of the balanced scorecard and business planning to their business operations. In spite of the existence of several avenues of financing, such as from micro-finance institutions, women had issues with accessing credit facilities, a majority of women SSEs did not have access to any of these funds. Consequently, the research revealed that most women entrepreneurs have not gone beyond secondary education and hardly any had post graduate education.
