Female Entrepreneurship and Informal Sector Employment in South-eastern Nigeria: Mitigating the Impact of Unemployment in the COVID-19 Era

Female entrepreneurship continues to play a pivotal role in generating employment in the developing economies, particularly in the informal sector. There is, however, a paucity of empirical research on the impact of women-owned enterprises on gender-disaggregated informal sector work in South-eastern Nigeria. The research was conducted using a survey method, which gathered 500 female entrepreneurs. The effects of entrepreneurial activity, experience, financial assistance and capital on aggregate informal sector employment, male informal sector employment and female informal sector employment were estimated using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. The results indicate that female entrepreneurship has a significant positive impact on informal sector employment in all three categories. There is also a positive and statistically significant effect of entrepreneurial experience, business capital and financial assistance on employment outcomes. This relationship between entrepreneurship and experience created a cohesive impact on employment among the women. The findings emphasise the significant contribution of female entrepreneurs to spreading employment in informal sectors, particularly in the recovery process after COVID-19. It is a study with policy implications that boosting entrepreneurial capacities among women could increase employment and economic sustainability in the area.