5 – Women Entrepreneurship

Introduction

According to estimates, women entrepreneurs make up roughly 10% of all entrepreneurs in India today. This percentage is also obvious: It’s increasing year after year. If current trends continue, it is not unlikely that women will make up 20% of India’s entrepreneurial workforce in another five years. Perhaps it is for these reasons that government entities, non-governmental organisations, social scientists, researchers, and international agencies have begun to take an interest in women’s entrepreneurship in India.

With time, Indian women have come a long way. Intriguingly, concerns concerning women in India, such as female foeticide, bride burning (for dowry reasons), and sati (widow burning), have become obsolete in modern India. Each of these acts is a crime, now being reported as an incredibly rare occurrence.

Despite such achievements by women in modern India, women in India are, on average, socially, politically, and economically weaker than men. However, steps are being taken to empower women. The introduction of the Women’s Bill in Parliament in late 1998 was the most notable development: the Bill intends to reserve a specific percentage of seats in Parliament for women. This bill’s passage has allowed women to participate in the legislative process and protect their interests. Furthermore, a National Human Rights Commission for Women deals with all human rights breaches against women, a National Council for Women pushes for women’s policy, and an entire ministry is dedicated to women’s policy formulation and implementation. As a result, attempts are being made to improve women’s status in modern India.

Women’s entrepreneurship can be viewed as a source of employment and income. The need to produce more female entrepreneurs stems from the fact that women make up half of the world’s population yet receive just 10% of global income and own less than 1% of global assets. Various governmental and non-governmental organisations worldwide have made efforts to promote women entrepreneurs. The results are reassuring in some ways. The number of women choosing entrepreneurship as a professional path is increasing. In India, there is also a noticeable shift in the kinds of enterprises started by women. The misconception that women are solely fit for cooking papads and pickles has been thoroughly debunked. Women are building a name for themselves in the clothing and service industries and the computer, chemical, and construction materials industries. Women’s entrepreneurship is growing with the country’s overall entrepreneurship growth. In modern India, ‘Women Entrepreneurship’ is here to stay.

5.1 Women’s Entrepreneurship: What It Is and What It Isn’t

Even though many women have progressed in economic structures, most women, particularly those who confront extra restrictions, have faced persistent challenges in achieving economic autonomy and ensuring sustainable livelihoods for themselves and their dependents. Women work in various economic sectors, which they frequently combine, including paid labour, subsistence farming, fishing, and the informal sector. Legal and cultural restrictions on women’s access to capital, credit, technology, and other means of production and salary disparities impede their economic advancement. Women contribute to development not only through remunerated labour but also through a significant amount of unpaid labour.

On the one hand, women work in agriculture, food production, and family businesses to provide commodities and services for the market and domestic use. On the other hand, women conduct the vast majority of unpaid domestic and community work, such as caring for children and the elderly, preparing family meals, maintaining the environment, and volunteering to help vulnerable and underprivileged individuals and groups. This work is frequently not quantifiable and is not valued in national accounts.

Women’s contribution to growth is grossly undervalued, so their social status is constrained. The complete disclosure of this unpaid work’s nature, scope, and distribution will also help women and men share duties more effectively. The decline in public services and public service jobs, as well as the lack of employment in the private sector, have disproportionately impacted women. In certain countries, women compensate for lost household income by doing more unpaid work, such as caring for children and the sick or elderly, especially when public services are unavailable.

In many situations, job development initiatives have not paid enough attention to occupations and sectors where women predominate, nor have they sufficiently promoted women’s entrance to historically male-dominated occupations and sectors. Given the reasons above, entrepreneurship among women is an area that can assist in generating employment and income for women.

5.2 Working Conditions

Women entrepreneurs operate in a different atmosphere than the traditional business world. The essence of women’s entrepreneurship can be visualised as working in three distinct contexts or domains, including:

Micro Sphere

Many countries have unequal power relations between men and women, often reflected in persisting inter-family inequities in task distribution. Male possessiveness and domination also reduce women’s bargaining power in the home, resulting in a loss of influence at all levels of operations. Gender relations also influence how men and women are assigned differing abilities, attitudes, and wants. These variables are considered significant in the growth of women’s entrepreneurship.

Organizations tend to be hostile to women’s economic empowerment because most are based on patrilineal and paralegal relationships, in which women rarely have access to property succession rights from fathers or husbands and where a woman is obligated to live near her husband’s family even after he dies. Women are expected to handle domestic work, childcare, and other home responsibilities, and their economic options are limited.

The demand that women stay near domestic activities hinders their ability to run a business, necessitating travel, even over short distances, to obtain supplies and meet customers. This is another significant cause of women’s entrepreneurship’s disempowerment.

Meso Sphere

Many government and non-government organisations provide support services to entrepreneurs. However, many of these organisations tend to behave as roadblocks when it comes to assisting women entrepreneurs. This might be linked to a lack of knowledge of women’s problems and insensitivity to gender issues in some circumstances.

The absence of assistance for women entrepreneurs by any of these groups that execute policies and operationalize programmes has contributed to their persistent disempowerment at the Meso level.

Macro Sphere

Laws and regulations, the economy, international trade, market liberalisation and globalisation, the availability of finance and credit, the labour market, human capital resources, technology, physical infrastructure, and natural resources are all part of the macroenvironment where women entrepreneurs develop and grow.

This atmosphere affects all businesses, large and small, managed by men and women alike. There is ample evidence to suggest that women are at a disadvantage in terms of the opportunities and restrictions deriving from these structures and dynamics compared to men. This is partly because gender ideology and practices significantly impact women’s ability to bargain in the labour market and other areas.

5.3 Obstacles in the Way of Female Entrepreneurs

Women’s entrepreneurship has been stifled all over the world as a result of the issues and limits they face. The key obstacles that women entrepreneurs face can be summarised as follows:

5.3.1 Lack of Self-Assuredness

Women have low self-esteem regarding their abilities. Family members do not appear to have complete trust in their abilities or decision-making capacities despite accepting a submissive status for a long time, even at home.

Women’s power, qualities, and competency are similarly undervalued in society. This is seen in the family’s reluctance to fund a woman’s enterprise, lenders’ aversion to taking risks on women’s projects, and people’s unwillingness to stand as collateral for loans to women.

5.3.2 Finance and Working Capital Issues

Another issue that women entrepreneurs confront is a lack of access to funds due to their lack of tangible security and other assets. Women have limited access to external sources of cash because they do not have any rights to property in any way.

Women entrepreneurs have difficulty obtaining working capital to fund their business operations, such as purchasing raw materials and paying employees. Due to a chronic lack of working capital, women entrepreneurs are highly exposed to competition and other emergencies.

This scenario must change over time, and women entrepreneurs must achieve financial independence.

5.3.3 Obstacles of a Socio-Cultural Nature

Whether a working woman or an entrepreneur, a woman must fulfil her responsibilities to her family. Traditionally, in our community, the male child was given greater priority in education than the female child. This has led to a shortage of female education and vocational training, a scarcity of technical skills, and a lack of awareness of available opportunities.

This adds to the difficulties that women face when starting businesses. Even the male labour force generally dislikes working for a female boss. The workforce does not take women entrepreneurs seriously enough. All of these things make it difficult for women to start businesses.

5.3.4 Issues with Production

Production in a manufacturing company entails coordinating a variety of tasks. While the entrepreneur has some control over some of these tasks, she has less authority over others. In the manufacturing industry, improper coordination and execution delays produce production issues. Women entrepreneurs face significant technology acquisition and machinery utilisation costs because of their incapacity to keep up with technological advancements and a lack of technical know-how. Because of these issues, the unit’s manufacturing costs have increased, reducing its profitability.

5.3.5 Ineffective Marketing Arrangements

Due to market rivalry and a lack of self-mobility, women entrepreneurs rely on middlemen. Women entrepreneurs rely on middlemen to advertise their products, who pocket a large portion of the proceeds. Furthermore, due to societal reluctance, Women entrepreneurs find it harder to grab the market and popularise their products. Moreover, women entrepreneurs confront challenges in collecting payments.

Suggestions for Improving Women Entrepreneurs’ Situation

Hisrich has proposed six strategies for assisting female entrepreneurs in successfully developing and managing new businesses.

1. Gain experience dealing with money by requesting a loan and repaying it if not required, completing tax returns, managing family finances, gaining expertise in bookkeeping, etc.
2. Conduct an honest self-assessment. Determine your strengths and weaknesses, and enlist the help of family and friends to do so.
3. Gain vocational experience: Rotate through several job profiles to gain marketing, financial, and planning expertise.
4. Identifying and delegating obligations: At home and at work, identify and assign responsibilities and organise and prioritise work.
5. Create a support system: Create a strong network of family, friends, clients, and business acquaintances.
6. Be determined and professional in the workplace: This is equally critical; it helps you acquire respect and confidence from employees, clients, lenders, and other business associates.

5.4 Women’s Empowerment

Women must be provided with adequate opportunities for a country to grow. Women’s empowerment will be best served by encouraging women to start businesses. Their socioeconomic level would improve as a result of this. When a woman believes she is financially secure, she will regard herself as equal to a man. This may be the most pressing necessity of the hour.

Over the years, the term ‘women’s empowerment’ has gained prominence worldwide. Educational attainment and economic involvement are important components in fostering women’s empowerment, which is critical to any country’s significant financial progress.

Women’s empowerment is a new term in the language of gender literature. In a broad sense, it refers to empowering women to become self-sufficient by giving them access to all the freedoms and opportunities they were previously denied only due to their gender. In a broad sense, women’s empowerment refers to improving women’s place in society’s power structure. Women’s empowerment consists of five elements: their sense of self-worth, their right to have and determine choices, their right to have access to opportunities and resources, their right to have control over their own lives, both inside and outside the home, and their ability to influence the direction of social change to create a more just social and economic order, both nationally and internationally.

For instance, Neelam Dhawan, the Managing Director of Microsoft India, has carved out a unique position in the IT business. She oversees the company’s sales and marketing division in India.

In today’s highly competitive society, women can empower themselves in various ways. Women’s entrepreneurship is seen as an excellent tool for economic development and empowerment of women. While several government regulations encourage women to start businesses in India, Self Help Groups (SHGs) enable even economically impoverished and socially backward women to band together and thrive through their collective efforts. The government’s policies and programmes encourage, help, and steer women’s entrepreneurial development. In Tamil Nadu, women react substantially and widely to the programmes. The success of these women entrepreneurs will dramatically impact the state’s economic development and poverty reduction efforts. Because women’s empowerment is based on attaining financial, social, and cultural power, their performance as entrepreneurs in their businesses becomes critical to achieving this aim.