Barriers Beyond the Glass Ceiling: Examining Institutional Constraints on the Expansion of Women Leading SMEs

Abstract

This paper focuses on the organizational barriers in addition to the traditional glass ceiling that encounters the development of women entrepreneurs. The study relies on four important institutional variables, including quality of legal and regulation, policy and fiscal burden, administrative and regulation barriers and institutional support and policy, which have given a wholesome picture of how the formal institutional structures can be used to promote women entrepreneurship. The study was based on a positivist research philosophy, and a causal research design was used to explore the relationship between institutional support and the prevalence of women's entrepreneurship in Surkhet district, based on a structured questionnaire administered to 378 women entrepreneurs. In PLS-SEM, inferential statistics were applied, and descriptive Data were analyzed using SPSS. The results indicate that inadequate legal and regulatory quality, high policy and fiscal burden, and excessive administrative and regulatory restraints are very serious barriers to the development of women-owned SMEs. Notably, there were no significant direct effects on institutional support and policy frameworks to reduce these constraints. The paper makes contributions that are relevant to policy, which include the fact that the special support programs cannot replace the structural institutional changes. To create gender-sensitive entrepreneurial ecosystems and allow sustainable expansion of the women-owned businesses, it is necessary to reduce regulatory inefficiencies and bureaucratic burdens.