A Meta-Analysis of the Barriers to Entrepreneurship for Rural Women in Iran

The main purpose of the research is to explain the barriers to women's entrepreneurship in Iran by using the meta-analysis approach.The statistical population of the research is the research conducted on the topic of barriers to women's entrepreneurship between 2012 and 2021. Purposive sampling was employed to identify 24 studies that met the criteria for inclusion in the meta-analysis. The third edition of comprehensive meta-analysis software was employed to analyze the data.The research results indicate that the aggregate effect size of women's entrepreneurship barriers in Iran is 0.481, which is evaluated as medium to high in Cohen's interpretation system. Based on the research's results, the most significant obstacles to women's entrepreneurship in Iran are cultural, social, economic, and background barriers . Cultural barriers have an effect size of 0.388, while social barriers have an effect size of 0.429, economic barriers have an effect size of 0.523, and contextual barriers have an effect size of 0.549. Background barriers with 0.549 have had the greatest effect on women's entrepreneurship.As indicated by the research findings, women's entrepreneurship encounters numerous obstacles, including cultural, social, economic, political, and contextual obstacles.  Ultimately, these barriers have resulted in women's unwillingness to participate in entrepreneurial activities and their non-participation in entrepreneurial activities, as well as concern and discouragement. According to the results, removing these barriers and increasing the willingness of women in entrepreneurial activities will lead to wealth production, technology development, productivity, and training of entrepreneurs, development of entrepreneurship and promotion and improvement of the quality of life of women