Authors: Arockia Anisha
Abstract: Enterprises owned by women are central to trade in Zambia’s urban townships, yet they remain smaller, earn less and grow more slowly than those owned by men. This study assesses the barriers to growth among women-owned businesses in Chilenje, Lusaka, with particular reference to women trading in vegetables and in second-hand clothing. It pursued three objectives: to identify the barriers constraining growth, to examine the effects of those barriers on performance and growth, and to establish the strategies the owners use in order to work around them. A mixed-methods descriptive case-study design was adopted. A structured questionnaire was administered to a stratified sample of sixty women traders drawn equally from the two trades, and was supplemented by semi-structured interviews, key informant interviews and structured observation at the trading points. Quantitative data were analysed descriptively and comparatively, using means, frequencies, independent-samples t-tests and chi-square tests; qualitative data were analysed thematically. The study is framed by Kabeer’s (1999) resources, agency and achievements framework, which treats a barrier as whatever obstructs the conversion of resources into outcomes. The findings show that the three finance-related barriers dominate both the severity ratings and the traders’ own ranking of priorities: insufficient money for stock, lack of access to a bank or microfinance loan, and lack of collateral together occupy the first three positions on both measures. Only thirteen per cent of respondents had ever borrowed from a formal lender, while eighty-five per cent were unregistered and fifty-seven per cent relied instead on chilimba. Three barriers differed significantly between the trades: spoilage and storage pressed harder on vegetable traders, while the demands of home and childcare pressed harder on traders in second-hand clothing. Record keeping, the constraint most commonly addressed by training programmes, was ranked last of thirteen by the traders themselves. The study concludes that the binding constraint in Chilenje is not the absence of business knowledge but the absence of usable working capital on terms that unsecured, unregistered traders can meet, compounded by physical conditions at the trading point which convert a shortage of capital into a recurring loss of it. It recommends collateral-free working- capital products designed around the two distinct purchase cycles observed, investment by the local authority in covered and secured storage, and the formal recognition of chilimba groups as the delivery channel that traders already trust.
