An Empirical Insight of Women-Owned Micro Bakery Enterprises in Metropolis of Kano State, Nigeria

Abstract

The paper examines the characteristics of women entrepreneurship in Kano Metropolis of Nigeria with particular reference to home-based micro bakery (Gurasa) enterprises. A multistage sampling technique was employed to randomly select a sample of 236 respondents for the study. The result suggests that most of those engaging into the home-based micro bakery enterprises are women entrepreneurs. Using logit regression model, the study reveals that the main significant factors driving the probability of women entrepreneurship in the study area are marital status, education, business and membership of an association. Based on
these findings, the paper suggests any policy measures aiming to promote women entrepreneurship through education such as mass literacy, vocational studies and short-term entrepreneurial courses are highly recommended. Specific training for women entrepreneurs that may include business and technical skills as well as soft skills to make home-based business entrepreneurs more productive and by extension contribute to overall economic development of Nigeria are also needed. In addition to these, policies that would encourage learning from the experience would also sparse the growth of women’s’ entrepreneurship.