Towards Scaling up Palestinian women’s participation in Private Businesses

Abstract

This study sheds light on female entrepreneurship in Palestine, and explores the reasons behind its relative weakness as compared with men, and with female entrepreneurship in other countries. This study aims at proposing effective policies and doable measures to enhance female entrepreneurship. Achieving this objective will carry significant impact on employment and economic growth at large, and increase women’s economic participation, scaling up their independence, and demonstrating their skills and abilities, and putting women on an equal footing with men. Furthermore, entrepreneurial activity has increasingly become one of the key drivers of economic development. An increased rate of entrepreneurial activities among women, who constitute half of society in terms of populations size and educational qualification, will create many new job opportunities and translate into higher GDP. It will also serve achieving other desired outcomes concerning women’s income levels and living standards of their families in particular and women’s societal participation in general.