Analysis of Barriers of Improveming Women's Entrepreneurship in Iran Using Analytic Hierarchy Process

Nowadays, women have an important role in business. One of the most important businesses is entrepreneurship that has a significant role in economic growth of countries and it is necessary to provide suitable conditions for self-employment and entrepreneurship development for women. It is obvious that there are some barriers and problems that women face on their way towards the development of entrepreneurial activities. Identifying and removing these barriers will lead to facilitating entrepreneurship. So, studying the barriers of women's entrepreneurship is useful for identifying the limitations and modifying the future way. In addition, it can ultimately help to increase personal and social performance. The aim of this study is to identify and prioritize the barriers of the development of women's entrepreneurship in Iran. In this regard, individual barriers, environment, infrastructure, starting and continuing work, organization, and job are identified and these barriers are prioritized from the perspective of Iranian entrepreneurial women and entrepreneurship faculty. Prioritization of barriers were carried out from the perspective of experts, using the hierarchical analysis process method. The results showed that the main barriers of women's entrepreneurship, based on men’s perspectives are basic barriers and based on women’s perspectives are environmental factors.