Identifying the Challenges Faced by the Women Entrepreneurs in Uttar Pradesh: Using Principal Component Analysis

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to identify and highlight the challenges and barriers faced by women entrepreneurs in Uttar Pradesh. The study is based on the primary data collected from a well-structured questionnaire survey based on a five-point Likert scale ranging from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’, conducted from January 2024 to February 2025 on 160 women entrepreneurs from four districts of Uttar Pradesh, namely Lucknow, Agra, Varanasi and Jhansi. Descriptive and factor analyses, using the principal component approach with varimax rotation of 22 items, have been applied to reduce and transform into new components and to identify the major challenges faced by women entrepreneurs in Uttar Pradesh. The findings of the study revealed that the factors were reduced to seven components, accounting for 60.03% of the total variance. Seven factors are as follows: operational constraints, technological and marketing constraints, gender-based and institutional constraints, personality-specific constraints, government support constraints, resource constraints and domestic responsibilities constraints. There were limited studies that focused on the barriers and problems of women entrepreneurs in the most populous state of India. So, to bridge the gap, this study focuses mainly on the four districts of Uttar Pradesh that represent the four economic regions of the state. This study helps policymakers and governments in making and implementing strategies and policies by acknowledging these challenges that create a supportive environment for women entrepreneurs of the state.