Women's Entrepreneurial Contribution to Family Income: Innovative Technologies Promote Females' Entrepreneurship Amid COVID-19 Crisis

Taoan Ge; Jaffar Abbas; Raza Ullah; Azhar Abbas; Iqra Sadiq; Ruilian Zhang

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.828040

Women's Entrepreneurial Contribution to Family Income: Innovative Technologies Promote Females' Entrepreneurship Amid COVID-19 Crisis

Front Psychol. 2022 Mar 29:13:828040. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.828040. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Taoan Ge¹, Jaffar Abbas², Raza Ullah³, Azhar Abbas³, Iqra Sadiq³, Ruilian Zhang⁴

Affiliations

¹ Changzhou Academy of Governance, Changzhou, China.
² Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.
³ Institute of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan.
⁴ Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining, Sustainable Minerals Institute (SMI), University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia.

Abstract

Women entrepreneurs innovate, initiate, engage, and run business enterprises to contribute the domestic development. Women entrepreneurs think and start taking risks of operating enterprises and combine various factors involved in production to deal with the uncertain business environment. Entrepreneurship and technological innovation play a crucial role in developing the economy by creating job opportunities, improving skills, and executing new ideas. It has a significant impact on the income of the household. The study focused on investigating the role of women's entrepreneurship and innovation technologies in contributing to household income in the challenging situation of the pandemic COVID-19. The paper emphasized identifying the determinants of female entrepreneurial contribution toward household income. This study collected data from selected rural and urban areas of district Faisalabad through a self-administered questionnaire. Investigators interviewed female entrepreneurs and chose them through the snowball sampling technique from a population of purposively selected female-run businesses. Interviews were conducted with women entrepreneurs to gather relevant information for the survey investigation at their workplaces and home. The effects of various factors, including age, education, family size, income from other sources, time allocated to entrepreneurial activity, firm size, and location (rural/urban) were estimated empirically using an ordered logit model. The study findings exhibited a positive and significant role of respondents' education, family size, time allocated to entrepreneurial activities, and firm size. The survey outcomes also indicated that the contribution of entrepreneurial income to household income in the rural areas is significantly higher than that in urban areas. This study signifies that regulations against gender discrimination in public and private institutions are helpful. Besides, encouraging an environment for entrepreneurial culture among women in the country would increase family income. The study's findings and policy implications directly link to Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) 5 of Gender Equality (GE) and SDG 8 related to decent work and economic growth.

Keywords: COVID-19; entrepreneurship; gender; income contribution; innovation technologies; women empowerment.