Entrepreneurship development and Industrial Consultancy

Module 2. Concept and working of entrepreneur

Lesson 9
WOMEN ENTREPRENEURSHIP

9.1 Introduction

In today’s male dominated society women constitute around half of the world’s population. In older days, probably in almost all society, the role of woman was confined to household activities. But in today’s globalized modern era, the picture has changed. Woman are playing active role in many different fields like academics, politics, sports, social work and also as entrepreneurs. In the United States, women own and manage about 25% of all business. In Canada one third of small businesses are owned and managed by women and in France it is one fifth. In Britain in recent years, there is three times faster increase in self employed women as compared to self employed men. In developed nations women entrepreneurs have chosen different activities like retail business, hotels and restaurants, education, insurance, manufacturing etc. According to one of the estimate, in India at present woman entrepreneurs constitute about 10% of total entrepreneurs and their number is increasing every year. Along with rest of modern world, Indian women have also come a long way in a step with changing times.

9.2 Status of Women in India

India possess the world’s largest number of professionally qualified women. The number of female doctors, surgeons, scientists and professors are more in India a USA. India has more working women a any other country in the world. Their participation ranges from menial to agriculture labourers, medical surgeons to bus conductors to air line pilots. But even with so much progress generally women are socially, politically and economically weaker a man. Government is taking all necessary steps to bring woman at par with men. Certain government support bodies like National Human Rights Commission for woman, National Council of Women perform activities for upliftment and betterment of women. At central level, there is entire ministry which formulates and implements policy for women.

9.3 Concept of Women Entrepreneurs

Women entrepreneurs may be defined as a women or group of women, who intiates, organizes and runs a business enterprise. According to Schumpeterian concept of innovative entrepreneurs, woman who innovate initiate or adopt a business activity are called women entrepreneurs. The government of India has defined woman entrepreneurs based on women participation in equity and employment of a business enterprise. Accordingly a woman entrepreneur is defined as ‘An enterprise owned and controlled by a women having a minimum financial interest of 51 percent of a capital and giving at least 51 percent of the employment generated in the enterprise to woman.’ But this definition of women entrepreneurs by government of India is criticized due to the condition of employing more than 50 percent of woman workers in the enterprise owned and run by woman. In nutshell, women entrepreneurs are those woman who think of a business enterprise, initiate it, organize and combine the factors of production, operate the enterprise and undertake risks and handle economic uncertainty involved in running a business enterprise.

9.4 Growth of Women Entrepreneurs in India

According to constitution, women enjoy all the rights and privileges at par with men. But in our male dominated society, in real life, situation is not the same. Even in modern world, in many part of the country she is considered as weak (Abla) and dependent on men. There is low literacy level, low work participation among women a men. As such Indian women enjoy a disadvantageous status in our society. Such non conducive conditions are responsible for low women entrepreneurship development in the country. Women’s entry into business or say entrepreneurship is traced out as extension of their kitchen activities mainly pickles, masala powders and papads. With growing awareness about business and spread of education among women with passage of time, women entrepreneurs have started their enterprise apart from their traditional sectors (pickles, masala powders and papads) to engineering, electronics and energy. In Gujarat they have excelled in manufacturing solar cookers, In Maharastra, in small foundries and in orissa they have excelled in enterprise of TV capacitors. Some of notable woman entrepreneurs of India include Smt. Sumati Morarji of shipping corporation, Smt Sharayu Daftary of antomobiles radiators, Smt Yamutai Kirloskar of Mahila Udyog limited, Smt Vimal Pitre of Surgical Instruments, Smt Manik Vandrekar of leather crafts, Smt Radanika Pradhan of plastic industries, Smt Prerang Thakor of Jayant vitamins, Smt Nina Malhotra in exports, Smt Rajani Agrawal in engineering, Smt Sehnaz Hussain in beauty clinic in cosmetics, Smt Wadia in fabrics, Smt Wehesa Reshma in fast food.

9.5 Problems of Women Entrepreneurs

The basic problem of women entrepreneurs is that she is a woman. Being women she has more responsibility towards family and society. In modern society joint families are breaking up. This manifests into loss of elderly support. This acts as a constraint for women entrepreneurs who has to leave home for the workplace. Even though constitution provides equal status to women, women entrepreneurs do face certain problems due to male dominated mindset. Although some women entrepreneurs have excelled in their enterprise, the fear of success haunts women in general. Some psycho social factors inhibiting the growth of women entrepreneurs include poor self image of women, inadequate motivation, discriminating treatment, faulty socialization, role conflict, lack of courage and self confidence, inadequate encouragement, lack of social acceptance, unjust social economic and cultural system, lack of freedom of expression, afraid of failure and criticism, susceptible to negative attitudes, non persistent attitude, low dignity of labour etc.

9.6 Developing Women Entrepreneurs

For all development programs initiated by government, women should be considered as a special target group. Special attention should be paid for their education right from primary level. It is said that women entrepreneurs lack managerial status and hence special training program on management skill should be organized. Vocational training should be extended to women community which will help them to better understand basics of production management. Existing and new women entrepreneurs should be counselled by managerial/technical experts at regular intervals. Financial constraints should be reduced. Women’s development corporations have to gain access to open ended financing. State financial institution should be allowed by making constitutional provisions to extend purely trade related finance to women entrepreneurs. State government should give priority in allotment of industrial plots to women entrepreneurs and should make provisions of marketing and sales assistance. Government should make provision for arranging trade shows of women entrepreneurs.

Following specific guideline should be kept in mind by all the women entrepreneurs

1. They should not undervalue their abilities. They typically tend to give away too much and charge too little. This generally happens in service based industry where they may charge by the hour instead of charging a fee on the merit of knowledge or service rendered.

2. They should learn to juggle family with business. Compared to men, it is difficult for women to completely ignore family obligations while pursuing business. It is important to sustain a personal life and balance family obligations with professional ones, if they are to be successful and happy.

3. They also need to be more persistent and assertive to make their presence felt in this male dominated business world.

Constitution provides equality of opportunity in all spheres to the Indian women. But unfortunately the development activities initiated by government have benefited only small section of women (urban middle class women). Women entrepreneurs face many problems. Women entrepreneurs must be molded properly with entrepreneurial traits and skills to meet the changes in trends and also be competent enough to sustain and strive for excellence in the entrepreneurial arena.