More on lady entrepreneurs in Malaysia

I came across this study by a few university experts, titled


"Improving Women Entrepreneurs in Small and Medium Enterprises in Malaysia: Policy Recommendations
Wendy, Ming-Yen, Teoh, Multimedia University, Malacca, Malaysia, myteoh@mmu.edu.my
Siong-Choy, Chong, Putra International College, Malacca, Malaysia, scchong@iputra.edu.my"


And I was intrigued by their observation on the lack of training which is depriving these entrepreneurs to grow and excel.  I am checking online with actual entrepreneurs through facebook and would be interested to find out their feedback. If you would like to give your input, you may answer the facebook poll here. Anyway, here is what the article said:


"Education, Training and Counselling, and Growth of Women Entrepreneurs
The combined impact of globalisation, changing patterns of trade, and evolving technologies such as
ICT call for skills that women entrepreneurs on the continent do not for a large part possess, as many
more women than men lack the requisite level of education and training, including business and technical skills and entrepreneurship training. 


Nevertheless, women are often disadvantaged in terms of access to training. They are often unaware
of training opportunities and are less likely to be able to afford the cost of training provided by the
private sector (and subsidisation of training is limited by the willingness of donors to support this).
According to a report by the International Labour Office, African Development Bank and Private
Sector Department [26], even if women could afford to pay for the training, they have difficulty in
travelling to central locations to participate in training programmes, and quite often cannot afford
time away from their enterprises and family responsibilities to attend weeklong programmes – even assuming their husbands give them permission to be away from home. In fact, some husbands often
object to training offered by men in certain countries.
 
In addition, most entrepreneurship training programmes is too general in scope and does not offer a growth strategy orientation. Many of them focused on the start-up process with very limited effort on the part of the training providers with regard to doing any post-training follow-up. In addition, women tend not to use supporting government programmes [34] including the training programmes provided. This might be a problem pertinent to Malaysian women entrepreneurs as generally there is a lack of entrepreneurship training and skills development in Malaysia where most women entrepreneurs acquired their skills and experience through their family members, friends and previous experiences [3]. Efforts are thus needed to increase the level of awareness among women entrepreneurs of existing training opportunities."


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The Author is the principal of ElixirEducate - a Smart Entrepreneur training house. He was an international investment banker, corporate financier and now a serial entrepreneur as well as a business coach. You can find more information on ElixirEducate at their facebook page, here.  And you can also be a facebook friend. Yazdi welcomes any questions (you just need to message him on facebook) that you may have regarding your business and will reply to your questions as soon as possible.