Factors Influencing Women-Owned Micro-Enterprise's Performance in Nakuru Town West Constituency ? Kenya

Women micro-entrepreneurs are known to contribute to employment creation, income generation and livelihood improvements. However, various studies indicate that women face constraints that limit their business growth and survival. Nakuru County for example, the rate of business survival was 13 in every 3 years for male operated enterprises as compared to 14 in every 3 years for female operated enterprisesbetween 2008 and 2014. This suggests that women entrepreneurs face constraints that are unique to their gender. This paper discusses these issues with a focus on determining the extent to which socio - economic factors affect the performance of women-owned micro-enterprises in Nakuru Town West Constituency. To achieve this objective, a survey research design was adopted to capture both the diversity of micro-enterprises and study sites characteristics in the study area. One hundred and sixty six (166) out of 830 women operated micro-enterprises (MEs) were sampled through multistage sampling procedure. Both primary and secondary data were collected and used. The former data was collected through administration of questionnaires, observations, and interview schedules for key informants. Secondary data was sourced from relevant academic literature, working papers and government publications. Regression was used to help determine the relationship between socio-economic factors of women micro-entrepreneurs on one hand, and performance (net profit margin, sales growth rate, and capital growth rate) on the other. The paper shows that age, education, marital status, training, experience, finance, and marketsignificantly and positivelyinfluence performance of women operated micro-enterprises in the study area. Taxation on the other hand influencestheperformance negatively. On the basis of this finding, the paper concludes thatwomen micro-entrepreneurs need to be better equipped by developing their human capital in terms of education and training, improved accessibility to finance, improvedaccess to market, and reduced taxation order to perform better. The study recommends that the policy makers at the national, and county governments levels should address the stated limitations so as to promote women micro-entrepreneurs contribution to their own livelihood as well as to the County and National economies. Further, the study recommends that future research could focus on entrepreneurs in other constituencies within Nakuru County as well as in other Counties to assess whether or not the factors affecting women micro-entrepreneurs performance are different from the ones experienced in the study under review.