Identification of Barriers and Strategies to Improve Women's Entrepreneurship System Using Hard and soft Operation Research Methodologies

Nowadays, women play an important role in business. In addition, entrepreneurship has a significant role in economic growth of countries. There is not any governmental agency or institute dedicated to entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs in Iran. There are only some governmental agencies and departments in the ministries supporting self-employment to some extent. These supports are public for both men and women and there are not any especial plans for female entrepreneurs. Moreover, there are lots of barriers that restrict women's entrepreneurship progress. The aims of this research are identification of women's entrepreneurship development barriers in Iran based on a holistic approach and regarding worldview of all those involved in the system, formulation of entrepreneurship barriers network and identification of key factors relating to the other barriers. In this regard, soft systems methodology has been used to identify the stockholders in the system and to identify barriers of women's entrepreneurship development. Social network analysis has also been used to map the relationships network among these barriers and to identify the key barriers. Finally, the conceptual model of systematic strategies was proposed to help improve the system.