Abstract

The aim of this research was to explore and identify the underlying dynamics in women entrepreneurship in the Sydney metropolitan region in Australia. While the main focus was on constraints and barriers, women in business face in general, the paper also specifically puts forth self-reported challenges about obtaining resources in the form of skills constraint, funding and network and support services. The goal is to understand the experiences of the Australian women entrepreneurs and recognise the constraints in resource requirements at varied stages of their business and the challenging environment in which they operate. This research found that challenges that the potential and the existing women entrepreneurs face can be divided into two areas: (a) barriers affecting women considering or planning a career in small business and (b) problems experienced by women managing their own business. Both groups identified the significance of access to varied resources for the survival and success of their business and pointed out that it was difficult to get a good mix of all these resources as the resource requirement in each case were heterogeneous at the varied stages of their business. Using the resource-based theory, this study recognizes the significance of heterogeneous resources at different stages in the business owned by women in Australia. The research identifies, firm-level factors and resource requirements for the survival and performance of women owned business in Australia. This study concludes that although human, social and financial resources are vital at each stage of the women owned business, the human capital requirement are stronger at the planning stages to set their business afloat and the social capital requirements are stronger at the managing stage for the survival of their business.