Relationship between Culture and Gender and Its Effect on Entrepreneurial Perception of Undergraduate Students in Public Universities in Kenya
Abstract:
University graduates present a big proportion of youth with untapped job-creating potential, both in developed and developing countries. Various perspectives have emerged in the entrepreneurship literature in attempt to provide answers as to why there exist both gender and cultural differences in entrepreneurial perception. The study suggests that examining the factors that influence peoples’ intentions towards entrepreneurship would best be tackled from a social-cultural perspective wherein attitudes, social norms, beliefs values and practices are nurtured in a particular direction that subsequently impacts on perceptions of career choices. The study specific objectives were to establish the effect of culture on entrepreneurial perception and to determine existence of differences between genders with regard to entrepreneurial perception of Undergraduate Students in Public Universities in Kenya. In this study, a descriptive cross-sectional survey design was applied to investigate the effect of gender and culture on entrepreneurial perception of the public university students. The targeted population comprised all the 16,151 Kenyan Government sponsored undergraduate students in public universities in final year. A total of 2192 students were selected as the study sample size. Primary data was using a self-administered questionnaire. A variety of statistical procedures were employed in the analyses of the data starting with basic descriptive statistics to more complex procedures like Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and multiple regression analysis and analysis of correlations between the variables. The result of findings shows that the relationship between culture and entrepreneurial perceptions is weak, positive and significant. The results of the regression indicated that Culture significantly predicted Entrepreneurial perceptions. However, there were no statistically significant differences on the reported measures of entrepreneurial Perception between males and females. Therefore, two conclusions were drawn that; there is no relationship between gender and entrepreneurial perception, and that there was a significant relationship between culture and entrepreneurial perception.
