Growing Women SMEs: unblock the Bottleneck of Access to Finance along the Business Life Cycle

Abstract

The paper investigates the impact of factors influencing access to finance on the growth of women-owned small and medium enterprises (WSMEs). Women entrepreneurs are frequently confronted with a lack of support and assistance, hence, less chance of financing opportunities, while developing their ventures. Despite the growing interest in WSMEs start-ups and economic growth, there is still a lack of both theoretical and empirical research on the institutional influences on WSMEs’ access to external finance and the financial needs across the BLC. Therefore, this study incorporates the institution theory and the pecking order theory, to explore how access to finance affects the WSMEs’ BLC. Additionally, the paper adopts two-approaches to further examine the phenomenon: the supply-perspective, institutional factors, including sources of finance, are explored and the demand-perspective, the financial needs across BLC. The study will utilise a qualitative approach to collect data, using face-to-face, semi-structured interviews with key participants in Mauritius.