“A Comparative Study of Impact of COVID-19 Crisison the Performance of Men and Women Small Entrepreneurs”

Abstract

With an increase in the world’s population, there is an increased incident of close interaction between men and animals and as a result of that the frequency of transfer of viruses from animals to man has been increased. The COVID-19 has affected all the men and women entrepreneurs in the world. The pandemic has slowed down the economic growth rate. Entrepreneurs are struggling to run their business, to sustain employees & customers, to do business travel, to take risk and to look after the family. On one hand small men entrepreneurs are taking all efforts and energy to survive their business on the other hand women entrepreneurs are fighting on two fronts one is their business and the other is their responsibilities of family, home and spouse. Their situation is very poor under the present pandemic crisis. The main focus of the study is to find out which gender entrepreneurs are struggling more and are more affected by the pandemic crisis.  Total 200 both men and women small entrepreneurs are considered for the study from Nagpur city.Multiple regression analysis and two-way ANOVA was performed to find out the dependent variable variance and effect of independent variables (strict lockdown policies, involvement in looking after family, difficulty in sustaining customers, risk-taking, managing sudden business interruptions and business travel problem) on the performance of the entrepreneurs. From the research it was found out that women small entrepreneurs’ performance was more affected by the pandemic crisis than male small entrepreneurs’ performance and women small entrepreneurs were struggling more to again reestablish their business.