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© Zakat & Waqf: Impact on Women and Community Development
ISBN 978-967-####-##-#

among these, one of the strategies stresses on helping to eradicate
poverty among women in that country (Al Zobair & Hoque, 2019).
Bello (2022) also highlighted that waqf can be used to upsurge asset
ownership, creation of wealth, and a promoter of economic
empowerment via sufficient knowledge of waqf instruments,
preparation, and execution by relevant stakeholders in supporting
Muslim women economic empowerment.

Overview of Women Entrepreneur in Malaysia
In Malaysia, a women entrepreneur is defined as women-owned firms
where women hold at least 51% of the equity, or the CEO is a woman
who owns at least 10% of the equity. In 2015, women-owned SMEs
which accounted for 186,930 firms or about 20.6% of the total SMEs
in Malaysia. In terms of breakdown by sector, the majority of 92.7%
firms owned by women are SMEs involved in the service sector and
this is followed by the manufacturing sector (5.1%). However, women
are less involved in the construction, agriculture and mining and
quarrying sectors (SMECorp Website, 2023). Overall, the involvement
of women in the field of entrepreneurship is still small. Therefore,
more support in terms of office spaces, training, and other kind of
support should be made available to attract more Muslim women to
venture into business. Hence, the zakat and waqf institution could play
a vital role in providing shared office space or co-working space for
women entrepreneur, especially for Muslim women entrepreneur.

Co-working Space – Current Trends
Co-working space facilities is to facilitate freedom and independence
by providing space to be rented and shared by business owners,
freelancers, and entrepreneurs who pay membership fees (Rani et al,
2022; Krishnan et al, 2022). Co-working spaces with virtual office
addresses would ease business owners to operate and manage their
enterprises. Furthermore, co-working spaces come with a variety of

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