Factors influence women entrepreneurs’ performance in cooperatives.

Nowadays, it is common trend that the population of women entrepreneurs continues to rise steadily worldwide and it has been proven presently that women have dominated more than one-third of all people involved in entrepreneurial activity. Besides, women involvements in entrepreneurship arena are becoming one of the main focus and concerns among researchers as well as the industrial practitioners nowadays since a lot of developing and developing countries open up an access for women involvement in entrepreneurial activities which previously been dominated by men. The purpose of this research is to examine the factors influencing women entrepreneurs’ performance in cooperative in Kuching and Samarahan, Sarawak. The independent variables involved in this research are entrepreneurial orientation, human capital, entrepreneur goals and motives, socio-cultural factors, legal and administrative factors. The mediator in this study is opportunity recognition while the dependent variable is women entrepreneurs’ performance. The foundations of the variables were assessed by using validate questionnaire. A total of 118 respondents in cooperative members’ participated in the survey. Data obtained were than analysed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 22. The empirical results indicate that the human capital was found to be significant with strong correlation and positive association with the opportunity recognition scale, whereas, the mediator was found to be strong correlation and positive association towards women entrepreneurs’ performance. Meanwhile, the relationships between other variables were found to be significant with moderate correlation and positive relationship with opportunity recognition. The main contribution of this paper has provided empirical evidence about the relationship between each variable. Moreover, it reveals what is the factor that influencing the most on the women entrepreneurs’ performance among cooperative members specifically in Kuching and Samarahan area. Areas for future research are also discussed in this research.