Facebook-Based Women Entrepreneurship in Bangladesh: Opportunities and Challenges

This paper aspires to analyze how social networking website Facebook is encouraging women in online based entrepreneurship. The study tries to uphold the scenario of online women entrepreneur as their participation is noticeable. To explore the opportunities and challenges of Facebook-based women entrepreneurship in Bangladesh by establishing research questions regarding; what are the factors that stand as success factors for women while operating Facebook-based online business? Is there any barrier while operating with it? The study adopts a quantitative research approach followed by conclusive descriptive research design. To collect the data from the respondents, a questionnaire link was uploaded in "Google form" and send to their messenger. ‘Descriptive statics', ‘KMO & Bartlett's test '&‘factor analysis' has been used to identify their demographic profile, success factors & barriers of operating their online business through Facebook. Nine main clusters of success factors (personal and relationship competencies, work-life balance, management, sourcing, entrepreneurial competencies, interpersonal competencies, internal motivation, passion, ease of operation) & barriers were identified, upon which delivery, competition, imported material, and customer interaction barrier stood ahead. This study is the first to offer a survey regarding Facebook-based online women entrepreneur in Bangladesh. Looking at the success and barrier factors, women can dream of being an entrepreneur online. Women, who already stepped toward the business can find an idea to tighten their action.


INTRODUCTION
Entrepreneurship is considered as an economic driving force for any country. Entrepreneurship researchers of described entrepreneurs as 'innovators' (Schumpeter 1934) who allocate resources, bears all risks, and manages all activities. From the last few decades, women have managed to make substantial growth in the area of entrepreneurship and the creation of a new venture (Kickul et al. 2008). In many countries, including Bangladesh, entrepreneurship is now a career option because it needs significant knowledge, skills, the attitude in a specific field rather than vast education and training.
Bangladesh is an overpopulated country. The government of this country is now encouraging and creating a platform for entrepreneurship. The government of Bangladesh is trying to provide direct and indirect facilitation and assistance in women entrepreneurship field by incorporating financial & logistic support, technological training, and implementing different policies, etc.
According to Jyoti et al. (2011), orientation in the field of entrepreneurship requires entrepreneurial characteristics that help make an entrepreneur innovative and growth-oriented. It attempts to focus on processes, practices, as well as decisions that challenge or admit the current and imminent changes in an improved way. According to Covin and Slevin (1989), the application of innovation, the tendency in risk-taking and nature of pro-activity are the concerns of entrepreneurial orientation. Without the participation of women entrepreneurship, no economic development can be possible (Sharma 2013). The Internet revolution has added an exciting feature to the online business (O'reilly 2007). Revolution of the Internet is not only termed as the technology means but it also facilitates the entrepreneur. In recent years, several established business houses have opened up online portals while others are starting new exclusively online businesses for it is relatively less capital intensive.
Up to the present time, Facebook.com has been placed as the second-most-attractive website after Google in the world, with having over 500 million active users (Constantinidis 2011). This study focuses on Facebook-based women entrepreneur; as women entrepreneur get easy access to, they can connect and reach anywhere within almost taking no time, with the opportunity of availing the immediate response of what people desirous of and what is the trend of the society & customers, also they flourish their ideas and directly interact with it (Aldrich et al. 1987;Teoh and Chong 2008). Nylander and Rudstrom (2011) argued that entrepreneurs could connect with more people using social networking sites 'Facebook'.An attractive feature of Facebook, easy handling procedure and minimum technical abilities encourage women to set up an online business through it. Online business growth has been noticed recently for the blessing of commerce (Aldritch et al. 1989).
Facebook-based online women entrepreneur issue is essential due to the massive participation of women in this sector (Constantinidis 2011). It has been noticed that women of our country are choosing a Facebook-based online business option for stabilizing or orienting career because of its attractiveness.
As Bangladesh is moving toward digital Bangladesh, this study sought to contribute to this emergent topic through a literature review on women entrepreneurship through Facebook media. The study is trying to answer the questions regarding; what are the factors that stand as success factors for women while operating Facebook-based online business? Is there any barrier while operating it?

Women entrepreneur
According to Histrich and Brush in their work from the year 1987, it has been argued that transforming ideas into economic opportunities is the crucial issues of entrepreneurship (cited in Akhter 2017 p. 37). Akter (2017 ) identified that Bangladesh is a developing country where women frequently face unfavorable working and business environment and also they are confined with limited economic activity but still women find a way through business to contribute their family income. Many pieces of research also have been conducted by Brown 1997;Chandralekha et al. 1995;Helms 1997;Hamilton 1993;Stoner, Hartman and Arora 1990;Winn 2005, etc. where it specifies that why women decided to inaugurate or switch from other professions to start their own. Women are stepping in the new sectors of entrepreneurship, which is online-based that proves women entrepreneurs play a vital role in the landscape of entrepreneurship (Pages 2005). Internet and related expertise are now acting as a media that lessen the trouble of women entrepreneur in this complex phenomenon.

Women Entrepreneurship development in Bangladesh
In Bangladesh, the Government has taken several steps for the encouragement of entrepreneurship. Every year there is a budget for about 1 billion with including other necessary facilities for the development of the women entrepreneur. Significant policies and rules have been passed for the development of the entrepreneur by the government of Bangladesh (Huq & Moyeen 2002). Separate tax policy, tax holiday, gift tax, etc. are included in the National Action plan (NAP) for the improvement of the women entrepreneur. Bangladesh Bank also has taken the initiative by approving 9% interest rate against the loan for the encouragement of entrepreneur (Parvin et al. 2012.). Organization from both the public and private sectors, NGO's tries to promote entrepreneurship like Micro industries Development Assistance and services (MIDAS), Special Bank naming Basic Bank which established with a goal to finance in the small and cottage industries, role of Bangladesh small and cottage industries corporation (BSCIC) etc are noticeable (Parvin et al. 2012). Different banks such as Sonali, Janata, Agrani, Rupali, Uttara, Pubali has opened up their 37 specialized branches encouraging deposits from women, which in return encourages entrepreneurial orientation (Roy 2016). Several SME branches are also growing nowadays.

Sectors of women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh
There are different sectors where women entrepreneurship has started its journey as well as also succeeded. It is undoubtedly remarkable in the field of entrepreneurship, that women are contributing to the various sectors of Bangladesh economy comprising 16.1% in textile, 1.6% in printing, 69.4% in handicraft, 3.2% in agriculture o product based, 4.8% in parlor, 3.2% in food and 1.6% in others (Roy 2016;Hossain et al. 2009). Now in this digitized era, women are more empowered by moving toward e-commerce. Among twenty thousand pages in social networking site named 'Facebook'; more than twelve thousand pages are created by women (Haque 2013). The numbers are growing day by day.

E-commerce
In Bangladesh, E-commerce businesses have gained their eminence by having a reasonable market position. E-commerce can be understood by the activities of buying, accompanied by selling, transferring, or exchanging products, services, or information through computer networks, including the Internet (ul Hasan & Fatima 2012). According to E-CAB, there are more than 7000 e-commerce websites that are engaged in selling their product on social networking sites (ul Hasan & Fatima 2012). E-commerce conveys enormous growth to the business sectors through its flexible schedule of 24/7. Nowadays, women are noticed by operating more online communication tools besides men to maintain their personal and professional contacts (Weiser 2000).E Commerce helps women entrepreneur to produce innovative ideas and work from home.

Entrepreneurship and social network
Entrepreneurship depends on the personal and professional relationship through which it can expand its business. In the case of entrepreneurship, social network emphasizes channels through which an entrepreneur can flows and exchange information that is essential for doing business. In the new scenario, a social network is an emerging tool for doing business. A social network can stand as the prominent method by which a meaningful relationship can be upheld and business strategies can reveal (Upton et al. 2014). Butler and Hansen (1991), Greve & Salaff (2003) and Lewis et al. (2008), insisted on the application of social network in the pre-startup stage of entrepreneurship. Among all the popular social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Biznik, Cofounder, it can be said that Facebook is the easiest, attractive, and useful sites.

Women entrepreneurship through the social network
According to Nylander and Rudstrom (2011), social networking sites help the entrepreneur to connect with the customers. To create social networking sites, most women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh follow some legal procedure to generate their profile pages where they can upload their complete information about the business and can attract through giving product images. Nowadays, online business is in revolution stage because of these social networks, where women entrepreneur can easily update any product arrivals, discounts, and customers queries regarding price and delivery, etc. The social network is listed as one of the tools frequently used by female entrepreneurs (Teoh & Chong 2008).

Online Women entrepreneur and Facebook
Among the other social media, FACEBOOK, which started its journey from 2004, has created a global presence. It is considered a social network which allows forming personal profiles, which later facilitates in sharing information and making a connection with others (Haque 2013). It is a combination of personal and professional usage. Tufekci and Lewis et al. (2008), insisted that on Facebook, women are more likely and socially active and also maintain a greater diversity of network than men. Discovering the business environment, women face many challenges that stuck their attempt in entering the business world with men. However, in online business, Facebook changes the scenario by giving a balance of power, solution to their limited access to financial strength, political & social status, face to face interaction, time and cost constraints, lack of experience, etc. (Herring 2001;Schwartz-DuPre 2006). Nehru and Bhardwaj (2013) analyzed the factors which motivate women to start their venture, their position in this competitive business environment. They insisted on applying out of box method. Successes are the outcome of economic, financial measures such as sales, profit, employee survival rates, or sometimes non-financial measure such as customer satisfaction, reputation, personal development, achievement, etc. (Nehru & Bhardwaj 2013). According to Paige and Littrell (2002), success can be categorized in the intrinsic category where the combination of freedom and independence makes a person capable of controlling his/her future by being his/her boss. Alam et al. (2011) argued that the feature named "powerful communication tool" act as one of the strongest weapons of women in achieving success. They can easily discuss and exchange their problems in teams by having a strong, convincing capability. Murphy et al. (1996) emphasize on women s internal motivation. Women entrepreneur mainly is self-motivated by setting their wants and needs (Orhan & Scott 2010). Some studies also consider women entrepreneur as positive passionate about their work, full of curiosity, and have great problem-solving skills through an innovative solution (Orser et al. 2011). In combination with these success factors, the revolution of internet &modern technology become important tools in a business environment for women. (Alam et al. 2011;Qureshi et al. 2014). Access of markets, opportunities in networking, and the internet are termed as the competitive advantage for online based women entrepreneurship (Teoh & Chong 2008). In this research, the success factors are classifies as 'personal and relationship competencies', 'work-life balance', 'management capability', 'sourcing capability', 'entrepreneurial competency', 'interpersonal competencies', 'internal motivation', 'passion', 'ease of operation' for online based entrepreneurship by evaluating previous researches.

Barriers
An entrepreneur needs mass information, skills, and labor to start, run, and to sustain her business over the long run. However, in the current scenario, online-based women entrepreneurship is starting very fast, but few are retaining in the competition. Some previous studies identified barriers such as limited access to financial capital, inability to find loyal staff, a weak economy, etc. Another study of Kirkwood (2009) found that entrepreneurs may face hindrance for growth and business development if they possess ' lack of self-confidence'. Women entrepreneurs' networks mainly confined to female contacts (Aldrich et al. 1987;Andersson & Evensson 2000). In a particular sense, the use of the internet may reimburse for the invisibility and lack of agency experienced by those who are understated in some professional circumstances (Schwartz-DuPre 2006). Previous studies show that in online business, some have mix experience after getting their desired product. This study focuses on the 'personal barrier,' which is a general barrier of any entrepreneur in our country since there is no specific government organization or mandatory requirement for improving an entrepreneur's skills. Here 'delivery problem' encountered as a barrier as it depends on courier rather than a traditional store. A significant portion of any business depends on the material from the outside, so the study investigated 'imported supplied material'-barrier. Online business depends on trust and loyalty from both customers and suppliers' sides. The study tries to explore 'customer and supplier interaction' whether entrepreneurs felt any barrier while doing their business. In online business, total success depends on the network of both traditional type and virtual type. So it examines 'network' as a barrier. Competition is good when it is under control, although success depends on the competitiveness of business operation. In online business, managing 'open competition' is the best strategy; otherwise, it becomes a significant barrier. The study took an attempt to examine 'responsiveness' as a barrier while the style of responses varies from person to person. Previous literature shows that for balancing the family and work life, entrepreneurship is the best choice of earning, to build up the concept the study is trying to face the opposite side of it and named as 'family barrier'. To the smooth functioning of any business, 'resources' is obligatory. Finally, the study concludes with the existence of 'capital barrier' &'human and other 'resource barrier' in online business owning women entrepreneurs.

RESEARCH GAP
Nguen (2005) argued that few studies had been conducted to find out the reasons women left the corporate world and became entrepreneurs. But frequent researches had been done to examine the drives and motives of men to initiate ventures (Shapero 1975;Denison & Alexander 1986;Hisrich & Brush 1987;Sheinberg & MacMillan 1988;Cooper et al. 1989;Birley & Westhead 1990;Shane et al. 1991;Marlow& Patton 2005;Brooks et al. 2014), whereas few pieces of research had been done on online-based women entrepreneurship and their reasons and factors for success. This research has been taken to evaluate online based women entrepreneurs who operate their business by using Facebook media. The study also identifies the factors that entrepreneurs admire for their success. This research also evaluates the barrier women entrepreneurs are facing while doing their business. Therefore, the objective of the study was to identify the factors that influence and stand as success factors of women to be an online entrepreneur through Facebook and to identify the barriers of online-based women entrepreneurship.

METHODOLOGY
Quantitative research methods formulate data into a standardized form, while qualitative research methods generate data into the non-standardized form (Saunders et al. 2000). In the area of entrepreneurship, both qualitative and quantitative methods have been used widely. This study has used quantitative methods to explore the factors that may have a strong influence on Facebook-based women entrepreneurship. Data were collected during 17 January -22 May in 2018. The researcher conveniently collected two hundred twenty-seven online women entrepreneur's Facebook pages within the said specified period that included handicraft, boutique, beauty, herbal, food, and multi-products item. The survey during that specified period of time received only 135 complete responses, out of which 28 was unusable for a range of reasons, leaving a sample of 107 with a response rate of 79%. The questionnaire link was uploaded in Google form and sent to the respondents in their messenger through 'link' so that they could answer in their convenient time.
For preparing this study, a combination of primary and secondary sources of data has been used. Primary data have been collected through a questionnaire survey. The study also reviewed existing literature, reports, seminar paper, research works, internet, etc. as a means of secondary sources. For collecting data from primary sources, a structured questionnaire with close-ended questions containing a five-point Likert scale (developed by Likert in 1932) has been used. The questionnaire was divided into three parts. Part 'A' consisted of a women entrepreneur's demographic profile. Part 'B' consisted of 23 questionnaires regarding success factors, and part 'C' consisted of 21 barrier-related questions. The statistical package for social science (SPSS 23) has been used for analyzing the collected data. The descriptive statistic stands as a summary statistic that quantitatively defines or precise features of a collection of information. To explore the factors, exploratory factor analysis has been performed, which tries to identify the influential factors of women to take Facebook-based online media as entrepreneurship. It is useful for data reduction or structure detection method & reduces the number of variables. It draws the relationship between the variables. Table 1 describes the demographic characteristics of the respondents. It shows that 48 respondents (44.9%) are aged between 30-40, and below 30 is 35 (32.7%). According to a British study (Bruch 1992), the maturing age of any women makes her capable of doing her own business. In the case of educational attainment, 58 (54.2%) respondents have graduation or equivalent degrees, and another 33 (30.8%) respondents have other degrees. In the case of marital status, married women are found to be 66 (61.7%) among the respondents, and unmarried are 27 (25.2%) in number. Thirty-three respondent (30.8%) are engaged in boutique, and ready dress item, 19 (17.8%) respondents are in a beauty product, 16 (15%) are engaged in multibusiness, another 16 (15%) are engaged in food, and 12 (11%) are found in herbal item. Fiftyseven respondents (53.3%) preferred taking payments through cash or bkash (a mobile banking service). Majority of the respondents told that they could earn 10,000-20,000) Taka per month through their business.

EXPLORING SUCCESS FACTORS FOR THE WOMEN ENTREPRENEURSHIP
The outcome of the study has been presented in terms of 'success factors' and 'barriers' of women entrepreneurship. Success factors present factor analysis that explains the fundamental and crucial reasons for their success. The descriptive analysis attempted to identify the critical barriers they often face while doing business. To test the suitability of the variables that influence women to be an entrepreneur, factor analysis also has been conducted. To identify suitable factors responsible for success factors, the present study has used principal component analysis. The results of each specific tool are presented below.

KMO Test
To proceed satisfactory factor analysis, the KMO measures have been used, which stands for the sampling adequacy by accompanying values greater than 0.5. If any pair of variables has a value less than this, it should consider dropping one of them from the analysis. In a good model, the off-diagonal elements should all be very small (close to zero). In the (Table 2) Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling, adequacy has been calculated as .539, which represents an acceptable score.
To check the strength of the relationship among variables, Bartlett's test is another important measure. It tests the null hypothesis, which proves that the correlation matrix is an identity matrix. An identity matrix is known as a matrix in which all of the diagonal elements are 1, and all off-diagonal elements are 0. The same table (Table 2) shows that Bartlett's test of sphericity is significant at 0.000; that is, its associated probability is less than 0.05. It means that there is a strong correlation between the variables. .000

Scree Plot
This Scree Plot presented in Figure 1 identifies the factors which are associated with the success factors regarding women entrepreneurship. The graph in the Scree Plot is showing the Eigenvalues against all the factors. An Eigenvalue denotes the standardized variance associated with a specific factor. The graph is useful for determining how many factors to be retained. The slope of the curve is leveling off from the factor 9, so only nine factors have been retained. Therefore, both Kaiser stopping rule and score test suggest a 9-factor analysis. So, a 9-factor analysis has been conducted to identify the factors responsible for orienting and growth of women entrepreneur in online business.

Total Variance Explained
Total variance explained factors that indicate the success factors responsible for women to be an entrepreneur. The item displays about entire factors extractable from the analysis along with their Eigenvalues, the percentage of variance attributable to each factor, the cumulative variance of the factor, and the previous factors. The cumulative rate of Eigenvalue> = 1. Here Kaiser's topping rule proposes considering 9-factor analysis for identifying the key factors that contribute to the orientation and growth of women to be an online entrepreneur. It is also noticed from ( Table 3) that the first nine components cover 74.991%. All the factors from (10-24) are not considered significant for the study.

Rotated Component (Factor) Matrix
Rotation of factors is useful to reduce the number factors of which the variables under study have high loading. Rotation does not modify anything but makes interpretation of the analysis easier. Factor loading of correlation coefficient based on a varimax rotation of factors is presented in Table 4.  Met delivery promises.

Sourcing capability:
This factor is similar to the blood of the business by sourcing capital and resources 1 Availing Capital funding. 2 Availing resources.

Entrepreneurial competency :
The entrepreneur should have challenging abilities to find a new supplier for proving product at an affordable cost.  Table 5 shows that a total of 24 variables are accumulated in the nine factors. The factors composed of the variables used in this study as the causes of orienting career in entrepreneurship through the influence of Facebook. From the survey, it has been analyzed that women entrepreneur feel positive about the nine factors and held as responsible for their success through online business.  Table 6 lists the barriers that women entrepreneurs often face in doing their business online. From the table, it is evident that all the respondents agreed on every type of barrier they face in running their business. The respondents gave the highest response in pointing request for delivering the product on credit naming under the delivery barrier. Vat and Tax regulation under the imported supplied-material-barrier. Request for cash on delivery under customer & supplier interaction barrier, where they sometimes fall under false treatment by the customer. They also face troublesome in finding the lowest cost provider supplier. They place the highest score in the competition barrier. It is also found out from their responses that they cannot manage their showroom which they are willing; because of their capital and other resources barrier. Overall the study reveals that the mean value of all the responses was from 3.76 to 4.85. This table also shows that these variables are normally distributed as to be a normal distribution the values of standard deviation must have a range between 0 and 1 (Cohen 1996) and the data clearly show that the value of standard deviation is less than 1.

DISCUSSION
From the above study, it has been noticed that middle-aged married women having graduation have the tendency to be an entrepreneur. They mostly took boutique & ready dress, food, multiitem for their business. Most of the women entrepreneur takes online business as the only source of income, which is supported by bkash and cash on delivery both. Nine factors have been found as personal and relationship competencies, work-life balance, management capability, sourcing capability, entrepreneurial competency, interpersonal competencies, internal motivation, passion, ease of operation has been identified for marking it as success factors for women entrepreneurship. Women entrepreneur also faces some barriers while doing their business. They mostly face problem regarding the delivery problem, imported material problem, customer interaction, and fraudulent in case of cash on the delivery problem, a massive competition that sometimes limits their minimum profit.

CONCLUSION
Digital Bangladesh facilitates internet using in such a way that women are confidently searching an approach for creating a business with the help of it. This study has taken the endeavor to identify the portion of women entrepreneurs who uses virtual social network Facebook as their means of doing business. Relevant literature supports the importance of social network for women entrepreneur to conduct business online. The study reveals that middle-aged women nowadays opt for Facebook-dependent online business for having easy access in the business. They believe that they can play a dual role by balancing their family as well as developing a career. In the study, findings also support that financial stability also achieved through it. It identifies nine crucial factors which stand for the success factors of entrepreneurship. It exposes some significant barrier which often faced by the women; in which, a huge competition, delivery barrier, customer and supplier interaction, and imported supplied material are excellent. Although they believe that they will up stood in any situation because by birth, they are being very social and maintain broaden the network of friend circle, which has a positive impact in operating the Facebook-based business. We can conclude with the proclamation that this research will surely sketch a path in the field of entrepreneurship. Virtual social network playing a significant role in online business, where Facebook is the most charming meanwhile women can find to open, share and enrich their customer by providing quality full product and service either by making or by importing. They are quite satisfied with their financial independence though they are suffering some barrier. If the government and other institutional support collaborate with the women, they can easily overcome their delivery and other imported material related problem. Most importantly, entrepreneurship education must be introduced to the member, or regular workshop can arrange for bookkeeping & maintaining of their account, necessary up gradation of technology, customer interaction, financing support, customer relationship management, etc. for the survival of the business.

LIMITATION
To attain the objectivity of this paper, all possible attempts were made. Certain limitations could not be ignored and required to be kept in mind whenever its findings are considered for implementation. Only selected pages are considered as a sample for the study. This study only focuses on Facebook-based online entrepreneur. The study is based on the review of the literature, questionnaire survey, face to face interview, but the study omits the option of case study method which could be a choice for a better understanding of the condition of women entrepreneur.

Acknowledgment
Prima facie I am thankful to the Almighty Allah for the good health and wellbeing that was necessary to prepare this research paper. This research paper becomes a reality with the kind support of many individuals. In the first phase, I would like to express my sincere thanks to Prof. Santi Narayan Ghosh, Director, BUBT Research, with his constant support and guidance. I want to express my gratitude to all the women entrepreneur who is engaged in online based entrepreneurship. I would also like to acknowledge all the respondent of this study who is engaged in online based women entrepreneurship; for their active participation in the survey and help me get the result of better quality. I am also thankful and indebted to the fair organizer committee concerning online based women entrepreneurship, where I got the opportunity to meet with the respondents and asked about their opinion. I also thank my parents, my colleagues, and friends for the unceasing encouragement, support, and attention.