The Combined Effect of Social Capital and Personal Initiative on Women's Self-Employment in Mbarara City

Abstract

The research investigated the impact of social capital and personal initiative on women who start businesses in Mbarara City, Uganda. The research focused on women's low entrepreneurial participation because self-employment has become recognized as a tool for economic empowerment. The research employed a cross-sectional quantitative survey design to gather data from 382 women entrepreneurs through self-administered structured questionnaires. The research used stratified random sampling to achieve business sector and geographical area representation. SPSS analyzed the data through Pearson correlation and regression models, which tested the study hypotheses. The analysis showed that social capital demonstrated a positive and statistically significant relationship with women's self-employment (r =.478, p <.01) and personal initiative showed a similar positive relationship (r =.563, p <.01). The combined impact of social capital and personal initiative explained 33.3% of the self-employment variations among women in Mbarara City (Adjusted R² =.333). The research indicates that women’s economic success depends on developing social connections and promoting proactive entrepreneurial behaviors through targeted interventions. The research demonstrates through empirical evidence that specific policies and programs must develop social networks and promote personal initiative while eliminating barriers to women’s self-employment in urban Uganda.