International Journal of

ADVANCED AND APPLIED SCIENCES

EISSN: 2313-3724, Print ISSN: 2313-626X

Frequency: 12

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 Volume 12, Issue 11 (November 2025), Pages: 152-164

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 Original Research Paper

Financial literacy, networking, and business performance of women micro-entrepreneurs in Malaysia

 Author(s): 

 Nurul Aliyah Sham Rambely 1, Azrain Nasyrah Mustapa 1, *, Syahrina Abdullah 2

 Affiliation(s):

  1School of Business Management, Universiti Utara Malaysia, Sintok, Malaysia
  2School of Languages, Civilisation and Philosophy, Universiti Utara Malaysia, Sintok, Malaysia

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 * Corresponding Author. 

   Corresponding author's ORCID profile:  https://orcid.org/0009-0003-2569-9153

 Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

  https://doi.org/10.21833/ijaas.2025.11.015

 Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the effects of financial literacy and business networking on the performance of women micro-entrepreneurs in Malaysia, with a focus on participants in the Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia microcredit program. Financial literacy is conceptualized as financial management, saving, and debt literacy, while business networking is measured by network density, reachability, and centrality. Using survey data from 508 respondents and regression analysis, six hypotheses were tested to explore the relationships between these factors and self-reported business performance. The findings indicate that financial management literacy, saving literacy, network density, and network centrality have significant positive effects on performance, whereas debt literacy has a significant negative effect, and network reachability is not significant. These results suggest that practical financial management skills and cohesive, central networks are crucial for women’s entrepreneurial success, while debt literacy does not necessarily translate into better outcomes. The study offers insights for microfinance institutions and policymakers to strengthen financial literacy training and network support to enhance business performance.

 © 2025 The Authors. Published by IASE.

 This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

 Keywords

 Financial literacy, Business networking, Micro-entrepreneurs, Microfinance, Business performance

 Article history

 Received 28 June 2025, Received in revised form 5 October 2025, Accepted 25 October 2025

 Acknowledgment

The researchers acknowledge the support of Universiti Utara Malaysia for providing access to scholarly databases used in the literature review. Furthermore, the researchers express their gratitude to Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia (AIM) for granting official permission to collect data from its borrowers. 

 Compliance with ethical standards

 Ethical considerations

The data for this research were collected from the borrowers of Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia (AIM) with the official permission granted with Letter No. AIM/UPI/800-04/01. All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments. The participants of this study were informed prior to data collection by showing the official letter granted by AIM.

 Conflict of interest: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

 Citation:

 Rambely NAS, Mustapa AN, and Abdullah S (2025). Financial literacy, networking, and business performance of women micro-entrepreneurs in Malaysia. International Journal of Advanced and Applied Sciences, 12(11): 152-164

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 Tables

  Table 1  Table 2  Table 3  Table 4  Table 5 

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