Factors That Influence Women Entrepreneurs in WomenHeaded Families: A Case Study of Ammachchi Canteens in the Jaffna District, Sri Lanka

In general, there are different types of pull and push factors that are encouraging both males and females to become entrepreneurs, but the authors of this article identified that the same push and pull factors are acting in different ways according to the different situations. Therefore, the main purpose of this article is to find out how push and pull factors are affecting women-headed families in Jaffna District in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 10 randomly selected women entrepreneurs in the Ammachchi canteens in the Jaffna District, in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka, because most of the women entrepreneurs at Ammachchi are the heads of their families due to the loss of their husbands. Further, this study is a qualitative case study, and data analysis was done through both narrative and thematic analysis methods; moreover, in this article, the authors selected family support, opportunity, education, network, independence, competition, and capital as pull factors in order to find out what factors are affecting women to start their businesses at Ammachchi. As a result of this study, the authors found that family support and opportunity factors are positively affecting, and education is negatively affecting these women entrepreneurs at Ammachchi under the push factors; then, network is a neutral factor at Ammachchi, but independence and competition are negative factors, and capital is acting as a positive factor under the pull factors.