In this study, we did both quantitative and qualitative analysis. A survey was conducted in Butwal Sub-metropolitan, Province 5 of Nepal. In total 300 women entrepreneurs in the informal sector were interviewed.
Correlation result shows that there is a positive correlation between income level and married women entrepreneurs, income level and more educated entrepreneurs, income level and migrated entrepreneurs. Next, income range from the business and higher-level business start-up investment also depicts a positive relationship. The Logistic Regression result shows that women entrepreneurs in the informal sector who are more educated in comparison to the less educated women are more likely to earn from their businesses. Entrepreneurs who started the businesses more than three years ago are more likely to earn than newly established entrepreneurs.
Descriptive statistics indicated 40 percent are vendors. They sell goods in small quantities such as jewelry, crafts, religious items, dolls, watches, socks, caps, toys, clothes, books, radios, clocks, kitchen goods, nail cutters, and shoe polish. Wholesale and retail stores come in the second rank which is found 26 percent. They sell mainly food items and household needs goods. Agriculture sector accounts 16 percent, they produce and sell vegetables and fruits. Hotel and restaurant sector is nine percent. They sell meat items, tea, noodles, coffee, juice, cold drinks, mineral water, and others. Under ICT, mobile phone money transfer cards, CDs, and mobile phones are observed.
Maximum respondents said their businesses are helping to save for the future. Others said that it is helping to pay for their kids’ education. Most interesting and important , old aged women (around/over 60 years) said they should not fully depend on their son or daughter after doing such businesses.
Several women feel insecure basically sexual harassment in the evening hours when they go back after business. Some respondents said government policy as a business barrier. Road expansion work producing dust and destroying their goods. It is also found that lack of access to capital and financial support, or under-capitalization, was among the key barriers reported by most female entrepreneurs.
Promoting women’s entrepreneurship and supporting the participation of women-led small and medium-sized enterprises in public sector procurement can be particularly relevant. Women’s representation can be increased through affirmative action, such as quotas for women on corporate boards, as in the European Union. In the Nepalese context and based on my findings, it is recommended that local governments must provide business doing trainings for females. Second, financial institutions must provide loan easily for low economic status females. Third, sub-metropolitans must record informal businesses’ data and allocate appropriate locations to do such business. Finally, informal businesses must gradually bring into the tax bracket in the future.
Finally, different factors contribute to empower women. Only informal sector businesses are not the major sector to bring up women but we should not underestimate its importance. Informal sector businesses are playing a positive role in generating income and as a seed of entrepreneurship. Government must provide start-up business trainings for women entrepreneurs. All informal sector businesses must bring into the tax bracket and gradually transfer them from informal to formal sector. Suitable research questions for future study could be: How can the local bodies in Nepal bring informal sector businesses into formal businesses? How the Pandemic is affecting informal sector businesses?