Performance of micro and small enterprises with a special reference to female entrepreneurs in North Gondar, Ethiopia

Introduction of micro and small enterprises in the economy of a developing country was with the aim of creation of employment opportunities and reduction of the level of poverty. This study was examined the performance of female owned micro and small enterprises (MSEs) in North Gondar Zone, Ethiopia. For this objective, data were sampled using survey questionnaire from the population of 14,571 MSEs operating in the Zone using two stages of sampling; purposive and simple random. The result depicts that gender of the operator has no significant relationship with the performance of MSEs in the study area. While common factors were hindering the performance of male and female owned MSEs; specifically, female owned MSEs performance had positively affected by completion of secondary education and formal business skills training. It also observed that female owned enterprises operating merchandising business were showing significantly positive performance.