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Barriers to women entrepreneurship are numerous but they are all treated with equal importance in prior research. We believe prioritisation will advance our understanding further. Hence, we start by identifying barriers from earlier studies and explore possible causality among them. A framework based on cause and effect relationship among barriers is proposed. Decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) technique was used to establish this causality. Our analysis identifies five of the 14 barriers as causal. They are as follows: lack of education, experience and training opportunities; spatial mobility and lack of family support; lack of institutional support; lack of entrepreneurial management; and problem in acquiring financial resources. Women entrepreneurs, scholars and policymakers will gain greater understanding through this causal framework of barriers. Knowledge and containment of these barriers will help in fostering a more conducive environment for enabling more women to attempt entrepreneurship.

Optimized ultrasonic assisted dispersion of un-functionalized titanium dioxide (TiO) nanoparticles (0.5-20wt%) into epoxy resin is reported. The investigation shows that there is a direct relation among nanoparticles content, inter-particle spacing and cluster size of the particles on the glass transition temperature (T) and tensile properties of the prepared nanocomposites. A significant improvement in tensile strength and modulus with minimal detrimental effect on the toughness was observed for the prepared composites, where compared to pristine epoxy resins, about 26% and 18% improvement in tensile strength and strain-to-break %, respectively, was observed for 10wt% particles loading, whereas a maximum improvement of about 54% for tensile toughness was observed for 5wt% particles loaded resins. The investigations found that a strong particle-matrix interface results in the enhancement of the mechanical properties due to leading toughening mechanisms such as crack deflection, particle pull out and plastic deformation.

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