Women’s Contributions towards the Success of Small-Scale Business in Sri Lanka

Small-scale businesses are critical to a country’s socio-economic development as they contribute to job generation, income generation and poverty relief. Gender equality enhances economic efficiency and improves other development outcomes. But women in business are especially significant in the context of moving Sri Lanka towards sustainable economic growth. Based on that, the key objective of this research is to examine the factors determining women’s contributions to the success of small-scale businesses in Sri Lanka. The stratified random sampling technique has been used for the selection of the sample and the data were collected using a questionnaire focusing on women living in the Gampaha District. The secondary data were also drawn from the Census report and sample survey conducted by the Department of Census and Statistics of Sri Lanka. In this study, the Chi-square test was employed to test the objective of the research. The results show that several significant factors such as the family background of women, support of a spouse, ability to make decisions, level of education and the amount of money invested contribute to the success of small-scale businesses in Sri Lanka. The results indicate that socio-economic factors directly affect women’s contributions towards the success of small-scale businesses in Sri Lanka. Encouraging women to stay in the workforce and building supportive initiatives to help them connect with small-business networks and information are important as per the findings of this study. Therefore, this study suggests implementing new policies to encourage small-scale businesses in Sri Lanka for sustainable growth.