Published Paper Details:

Women owned enterprises are steadily developing in Ethiopia and they are contributing to the household income and to the growth of national economies. Despite the growing number of women entrepreneurs in Ethiopia and their contribution to the economy and reduction of societal problems, they still own and manage less small business than men. The aim of this study was to assess the factors that affect the performance of women owned micro and small enterprises in Mizan town. The research design for this study was descriptive and explanatory research. The study used all 139 women owned enterprise in Mizan town. For this study, primary data was collected through questionnaire and interview. In order to obtain information from the respondents� questionnaire was distributed for all 139 owners of the enterprise and from which 123 questionnaires were returned. The quantitative data in this research was analyzed by descriptive statistics such as frequencies, percentages, mean scores and standard deviations using statistical package for social sciences SPSS (V. 20.0). The qualitative data was analyzed using descriptive narration. Pearson correlation analysis was used to establish the relationship between the identified independent and dependent variables. The study also used multiple regression analysis to predict the dependent variable and to shows how much a unique variance in the dependent variable is explained by each of independent variables. The study found that major factors affecting the performance of women owned enterprise in the study area was Access to finance, access to infrastructure and government relate factors. The study concluded that there is significant and positive relation between independent variables (work premises, access to finance, access to infrastructure, Managerial and entrepreneurial skill, government and market related factors) and dependent variable (performance of women owned enterprises).Finally, the study recommended that micro and small enterprise office should work in collaboration with different financial institutions to create easily accessible financial environment, Mizan town micro and small enterprise office should work in collaboration with different institution in order to provide uninterrupted service for women operators and the government should move in quickly to create policies that favor the growth and expansion of women owned enterprise