The Iranian Women Entrepreneur's Networks and Business Start-up

In Irn, entrepreneurship is a new phenomena and the research on this subject, especially when it comes to women’s entrepreneurship, is very limited. Despite the fact that most Iranian women are participating in socioeconomic activities and higher education in particular, the society does not reap all the rewards of their socio-economic participation. Based on entrepreneurship research, entrepreneurship networks have four outcomes: motivation, presentation of the models roles, customized consultations, and the facilitated access to resources. The research on women’s entrepreneurship indicates that women utilize rather personal networks and the affective support and that this is the most important role of personal networks in start-up process. In order to gain a general understanding about the knowledge of the Iranian women concerning the business and factors that influence the start-up process, an extensive national research was conducted on educated women entrepreneur population. A questionnaire, which was later expert-modified and pre-tested, was devised for such subject. This paper is a partial presentation about women’s entrepreneurs’ networks. The results show that the most important supporters of the Iranian women entrepreneurs are their immediate relatives that are their husbands and children or their parents. Affective support is the most and financial gain is the least important factors for them.