Barriers to entrepreneurial intentions of women: Nominal group technique, analytic hierarchy process, and scientometric approach instigating the necessity of policy intervention

• Published date: 01 May 2022
• Author: Bhairab Chandra Patra,Usha Lenka
• Date: 01 May 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2429

ACADEMIC PAPER

Barriers to entrepreneurial intentions of women: Nominal

group technique, analytic hierarchy process, and scientometric

approach instigating the necessity of policy intervention

Bhairab Chandra Patra | Usha Lenka

Department of Management Studies, IIT

Roorkee, Roorkee, India

Correspondence

Bhairab Chandra Patra, Department of

Management Studies, IIT Roorkee, Roorkee,

India.

Email: bhairab.official@gmail.com

A review of the literature was conducted followed by scientometric analysis. Nominal

group technique (NGT) was used to identify major barriers to the entrepreneurial

intentions of women. Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was then applied by taking

advice from 13 experts including entrepreneurs to prioritize the barriers and finally

necessary prescriptions were suggested. The purpose of this study is to identify the

important terms used by earlier researchers, map the terms into various topics of bar-

riers and finally prioritize the major barriers to the entrepreneurial intentions of

women to facilitate finding necessary solutions. The findings bring to light 3 important

categories of barrier and 12 sub-barriers. Lack of self-confidence, economic barriers,

and women status and rights and were the most influential individual barrier, contex-

tual barrier, and sociocultural barrier with a priority of 58.6, 51.1, and 54.7% in their

own categories, respectively. The technique of Scientometric analysis has been less

explored in the domain of barriers to entrepreneurial intentions of women and to the

best of the knowledge of the authors, no earlier researcher has attempted to use the

technique of scientometric analysis, NGT, and AHP in combination. The findings will

help better access the prioritized barriers which need immediate attention of the pol-

icymaking bodies. Government, as well as industrial policymakers, can implement the

identified counteracting practices to barriers of entrepreneurial intentions of women

to obtain optimum results and smooth functioning of the companies.

1|INTRODUCTION

Women are growing in the field of entrepreneurship but are still not

even close to the participation which is done by their male counter-

parts, particularly in the third world countries. Women form the larg-

est chunk of untapped social capital resource. The social cognitive

theory of gender role states that actions of women are based on their

past experiences (Bussey & Bandura, 1999). Women form around

50% of world population but the participation is entrepreneurship is

not even close to that percentage. Leaving only two countries Japan

and Peru, the rate of participation of women is significantly lower

than men, and in some countries the ratio of female entrepreneurship

to that of male entrepreneurship goes even below 50 % (Allen, Elam,

Langowitz, & Dean, 2008). Research has illustrated that gender of an

individual plays an important role in influencing the individual to

become an entrepreneur (Perez-Quintana, Hormiga, Martori, &

Madariaga, 2017). To understand the underlying reasons of this lower

participation of women in the field of entrepreneurship, it is important

to understand the cognitive thought process of women. So rather

than studying the barriers to entrepreneurship it is important to study

the barriers to entrepreneurial intentions, which can help to better

understand these cognitive processes at a deeper level and help in

establishing a strong foundation for potential and nascent entrepre-

neurs. In this research paper, the authors have attempted to analyze

what are the barriers to entrepreneurial intentions. There are many

individual, social as well as contextual barriers which influence the

entrepreneurial intentions. These barriers are responsible for the sig-

nificantly lower participation of women in the field of

Received: 28 April 2020 Revised: 25 July 2020 Accepted: 20 August 2020

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2429

J Public Affairs. 2022;22:e2429. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1of12

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2429