How Effective Is Government Support for Korean Women Entrepreneurs in Small and Medium Enterprises?

Women entrepreneurs are not as involved in economic activities as should be expected, despite the growing number of women entrepreneurs and increased government support in Korea. This study aims to investigate how effective the government is in terms of boosting the satisfaction of women entrepreneurs using the structural equation model. We investigated causal effect of government support policy and government support process on women entrepreneurs' satisfaction along with many other personal factors such as individual capacity, family life, social network, and business environment. The empirical results show that the government support process has the highest effect on the improvement of the satisfaction of women entrepreneurs. However, the current level of government support process is relatively low and therefore needs to be improved. It is interesting to note that the government support policy has the least effect on the satisfaction of women entrepreneurs. That is, women entrepreneurs are not sensitive to the support scale, support program, and gender-sensitive policies currently employed in Korea. Also, we obtain the satisfaction index of women entrepreneurs according to their marital status, presence of children, age, education level, and business type. Finally, we propose improvement plans that can effectively be activated for each business type in which women entrepreneurs are involved.