The Challenges of Growing Small Businesses - International Labour ...

their time is already constrained by family responsibilities in addition to managing their
businesses.
In Tanzania over one quarter of the women entrepreneurs felt that the problems that
they experienced in business were limited to gender-related reasons, due to the severe
constraints that family responsibilities put on their time. Time spent in negotiating their
way through the officialdom for licences was seen as consuming a major proportion of the
women’s time.
4.9.4 Harassment
In Zambia the women entrepreneurs reported that some officials demanded money to
complete the procedures, and this further exacerbated the issue of procedural delays. In
some cases women reported being harassed for sexual services. It is perhaps not
surprising, therefore, that in Zambia 80 per cent of the women said that they had registered
their businesses to help avoid harassment by law enforcement officers. In Tanzania the indepth
case studies revealed stories about the women being harassed by tax and local
government officials, demonstrating direct gender-based discrimination targeted at women
entrepreneurs.
The women generally perceive that tax and local government officials deliberately harass them
in order to extort bribes from them. They do this by deliberately overstating the tax liability in
order that the woman negotiates with them. ….Respondents reported many instances where
tax officials took away their working tools because the women had not paid the taxes which
the officials were demanding. This necessitated closing the business for up to a week in order
to regain the equipment. On some occasions, these tools were damaged while in the hands of
the officials and there is no compensation for such damage (ILO, 2003b, p. 33).
4.9.5 Summary aspects relating to the enabling
environment
In summary the regulatory environment would appear to have a disabling effect on
the women entrepreneurs in many respects. Most of the incidences mentioned are typical
and are experienced by most of those operating in the MSE sector as a whole. It should be
noted that regulations are mainly designed and implemented with larger corporations in
mind, and not based on the situations and requirements of MSEs. However, experiences
from all three countries would suggest that the women do experience a number of specific
gender-related constraints – mostly concerning their more limited business “know how”
and “know who”, constraints that family responsibilities put on the time available to liase
and negotiate with officials, and generally being more vulnerable to financial and sexual
harassment by those officials who do not respect women as entrepreneurs in their own
right.
4.10 The socio-cultural and economic context
The socio-cultural and economic contexts in which MSEs operate are sources of
numerous enabling and disabling factors for business development for women as well as
men entrepreneurs (see Figure 11). As noted earlier, many of the less tangible constraints
impacting on women’s business are associated with attitudes and practices in society. In
most previous research on women entrepreneurs, socio-cultural issues are largely discussed
in a negative way with regard to their influence and impact on women entrepreneurs.
The findings of this WED Study endorse this view. However, they also show that
positive attitudes and practices in the family, in particular, are critically important in
allowing and supporting women to become successful women entrepreneurs.
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