Women Entrepreneurship: The present trends

of Developing Economic Workforces

Dr. R.SURYA PRAKASHM.Com., M.Phil., PGDCA., Ph.D.,

Abstract:
This paper indicates and emphasizes the women entrepreneurs as the potentially
emerging human resource in the present century to overcome the economic challenges in
global perspective. Women is no more a traditional resource confined to homes only rather an
educated, knowledgeable and innovative part of the overall population possessing the
capacity to transform economies into thriving enterprises. Developing and developed nations
have realized that developing women entrepreneurship is indispensible to flourish as
economically dominant nation in the modern high-tech world. Therefore, creation of
platforms and networks for entrepreneurial culture are prominent issues globally. This paper
ascertains the factors in the emergence of women entrepreneurs further study highlighted the
major constraint and challenges faced by women entrepreneur and opportunity available to
them. At the end the paper makes some suggestions for increase or promotion of women
entrepreneurs and healthy growth of women entrepreneurs in India.

1 Guest Lecturer in PG. Dept. of Commerce, Govt. Arts College MelurEmail

rs_suryaprakash@yahoo.com

Women Entrepreneurship: The present trends

of Developing Economic Workforces
You can tell the condition of a nation by looking at the status of its women.
- Jawaharlal Nehru
The emergence of women entrepreneurs and their contribution to the national
economy is quite visible in India. The number of women entrepreneurs has grown over a
period of time, especially in the 1990s. Women entrepreneurs need to be lauded for their
increased utilization of modern technology, increased investments, finding a niche in the
export market, creating a sizable employment for others and setting the trend for other
women entrepreneurs in the organized sector. Indian women business owners are changing
the face of businesses of today, both literally and figuratively. The dynamic growth and
expansion of women-owned businesses is one of the defining trends of the past decade, and
all indications are that it will continue unabated. For more than a decade, the number of
women-owned businesses has grown at one-and-ahalf to two times the rate of all businesses.
Even moreimportant, the expansion in revenues and employment has far exceeded the growth
in numbers.
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
To study the present status of women entrepreneurs in India.
To identify the various problems & challenges faced by women entrepreneur in Indian
economy.
To make suitable suggestions for promoting women entrepreneurs in India.
EMERGING ECONOMIC FORCE
Women owned businesses are highly increasing in the economies of almost all
countries. The hidden entrepreneurial potentials of women have gradually been changing
with the growing sensitivity to the role and economic status in the society. Skill, knowledge
and adaptability in business are the main reasons for women to emerge into business

ventures. Women Entrepreneur is a person who accepts challenging role to meet her
personal needs and become economically independent. A strong desire to do something
positive is an inbuilt quality of entrepreneurial women, who is capable of contributing values
in both family and social life. With the advent of media, women are aware of their own traits,
rights and also the work situations. The glass ceilings are shattered and women are found
indulged in every line of business from pappad to power cables. The challenges and
opportunities provided to the women of digital era are growing rapidly that the job seekers
are turning into job creators. They are flourishing as designers, interior decorators, exporters,
publishers, garment manufacturers and still exploring new avenues of economic participation.
In India, although women constitute the majority of the total population, the entrepreneurial
world is still a male dominated one. Women in advanced nations are recognized and are more
prominent in the business world.
PRESENT STATUS OF WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS IN INDIA
Out of the total 940.48 million people in India, in the 1990s female comprise of
437.10 million representing 46.5% of the total population. There are 126.48 million women
work-force (representing 28.9% of the female population) but as per the 1991 census only
1,85,900 women accounting for only 4.5% of total self-employed persons in the country were
recorded. Majority of them are engaged in the un-organized sector like agriculture, agrobased industries, handicrafts, handloom and cottage based industries.
Participation of women as industrial entrepreneurs, however is comparatively a recent
phenomenon commencing from 70s era onwards. There were more than 2,95,680 women
entrepreneurs claiming 11.2 % of total 2.64 million entrepreneurs in India, during 1995- 96.
This is almost double the percentage of women (5.2%) among the total population of selfemployed during 1981. On this, a majority was concentrated in low-paid, low-skilled, lowtechnology and lowproductivity jobs in the rural and unorganized sector. Almost 79.4 million
women workers were in the rural areas as against only 10% (86 million) in the urban areas.
Only 2.5 million women workers were in the organized sector and a small percentage
of 12.4% were total employed. During the 8th, 5 year planning period the number of SSIs
expected to rise from 1.7 million to 2.5 million adding 0.8 million in the 5 year period or 1.60
lakh every year. The rough estimate showed that amongst the SSI entrepreneurs approx. 9%
were women entrepreneurs. Their participation, however, is increasing.

Thus considering the trend women participation in another 5 years was more than
20%, raising the number of women entrepreneurs to about 5,00,000. Therefore one could aim
at developing atleast 3,50,000 women entrepreneurs during the 8th five year planning period
through training and other developmental efforts.
The present rate of 30% success in EDP training was likely to go up-to 45% with
growing experience and improved techniques of training and follow-up. Based on this
assumption for getting 3.5 lakh women entrepreneurs it was necessary to train and support
about 7.78 lakh entrepreneurs, during the aforesaid period. As per the 2001 census report,
there are 22.73% of women workers of the total working population including formal as well
as informal sector. In the era of L.P.G (Liberalization, Privatization, Globalization) the Indian
women entrepreneurs are very fast entering the non-traditional sectors, which indeed is in
response to their greater awareness. Work participation of Indian women is 22% as per 1991
census and triple in rural areas around 27% and in urban areas 9%, thus the role and
involvement of women entrepreneurs in rural sector is tremendously enhancing, the literacy
levels increased ratio is also a significant factor of this positive trend in the field of
entrepreneurship.
WOMEN ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN INDIA
Earlier there were3 Ks: Kitchen, Kids & Knitting
Then came 3 Ps: Powder, Pappad& Pickles
At present there are 4 Es: Electricity, Electronics, Energy& Engineering
WOMEN ENTERPRISES IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
More female entrepreneurship exists in developing countries where traditionally
higher birth rates prevail. The law and customs of marriage have higher rate of influence
whether a woman chooses to be an entrepreneur. Monolova, (2008). The attitudes and
employment practices in low income countries generally speaking are less likely to provide
child care, health care and training opportunities to women as employees. At the sametime,
employers are less likely to provide a comfortable workplace and a set of adequate work
practices that allow a woman to both perform satisfactorily on the job and care appropriately
for her children. Muhammad, (2008). As a result, women in low income countries have
strong incentives to create their own work environments that are compatible with their child

rearing and household responsibilities at the same time. Gem report, (2004). This tendency is
more strengthened in typically lower degree of involvement in child care by fathers in poorer
countries. Consequently women look for home based business opportunities preferably.
Brush, carter and gatewood, (2006). Issues related to womans ability & willingness to create
new businesses, concern exists about the survival & growth rates of female-owned
businesses.
CONSTRAINTS & CHALLENGES ASSOCIATED WITH WOMEN
ENTREPRENEURS
Basically all women entrepreneurs almost suffer from two main category of problems,
such problems can be designated as follows:- 1) Specific Problems 2) General Problems. The
first category of problems affect women specifically in their smooth operations of enterprise,
while the other category of problems have a general or over-all affect on the enterprises
owned bysuch group of women entrepreneurs. Over-all these problems can be summed up as
under:
Problem of Finances arrangement: Finance is said to be the life blood of every business
undertaking, be it large or medium or small scale enterprise. Usually women entrepreneurs
face the problems of shortage of finance on two important grounds. Firstly, women do not
generally have property on their own names to use that as collateral securities for obtaining
loans/funds from banks and other financial institutions. Thus their access to external sources
is very limited. Secondly, the banks also consider women less credit worthy and discourage
women borrowers on the belief that they cannot repay back the amount of loans taken by
them.
Scarcity of raw materials required for productive capacities: They have to even face the
problems of scarcity of raw-materials and necessary inputs. On the top of this, is the high
prices of raw materials, on one hand and getting raw materials at minimum discount rates is
the other.
Limited mobility factor in case of women entrepreneurs: Unlike men, women mobility in
India is highly limited due to many factors/reasons. A single women asking for room is still
looked with suspicion. Cumbersome exercise involved in starting with an enterprise coupled
with officials humiliating attitude towards women compels them to give up their spirit of
surviving in enterprise altogether.

 Lack of education and prevalent levels of illiteracy amongst women: In India, around
3/5th(60%) of women are still illiterate. Illiteracy is the root cause of socio-economic barriers
or hurdles. Due to lack of education and that to qualitative education, women are not aware of
business, technology and market knowledge. Also lack of education causes low achievement
motivation amongst women. Thus lack of education creates problems before women to set up
competitive enterprises.
Domination by male and ideology of male dominated society: Male chauvinism is still
prevalent in many parts of the country yet. The constitution of India speaks about the equality
between both the sexes, i.e. men and women. But in practice, women are looked upon as
abla i.e. weak in all respects. Thus women suffer from a number of problems, in a nutshell
in a male dominated society, women are not treated equal to men. This in turn, serves as a
barrier to womans entry into business.
Lack of self-confidence and optimistic attitude amongst women: Today all the women are
suffering from one major problem of lack of selfconfidence, will-power, strong mental
outlook, optimism etc. They always fear from committing mistakes while doing their piece of
work, more over there is limited initiative of taking risk and bearing uncertainty in them.
Thus all these psychological factors often obstructs their path of achieving success in the area
of enterprise.
Old and outdated social outlook to stop women from entering in the field of
entrepreneurship: Also one of the dominant reason for their failure is the attitude of society
people towards their modern business prospects and developing attitude. Women nowadays
have low risk taking ability because of the number of questions put forward by the
conservative society people. Thus they are under a social pressure which restrains them to
prosper and achieve success in the field of entrepreneurship.
SUGGESTIONS FOR PROMOTING WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS IN INDIA
On the basis of the above mentioned problems faced by women entrepreneurs and
various other problems too, there is a provision of a number of solution measures to
overcome the aforesaid problems. Such solutions or remedies can be well understood as
under:
There should be a continuous attempt to inspire, encourage, motivate and cooperate women
entrepreneurs.

 Attempts to establish for them proper training institutes for enhancing their level of workknowledge, skills, risk-taking abilities, enhancing their capabilities.
Attempts to bring about a society attitude change, generation of awareness and
consciousness on the policy of self-development of women entrepreneurs.
Establishing various policies to offer easy finance schemes for economically strengthening
the position of women.
Offering seed capital, up-liftment schemes, women entrepreneurs fund etc. to encourage
them economically.
To extend confessional rates facilities and schemes for women entrepreneurs to prosper in
the field of enterprise.
CONCLUSION
Entrepreneurship is presently the most discussed and encouraged concept all over the
world to overcome economic challenges. Women being the vital gender of the overall
population have great capacity and potential to be the contributor in the overall economic
development of any nation. Therefore, programs and policies need to be customized to not
just encourage entrepreneurship as well as implement strategies which can help support
entrepreneurial culture among youth.
Media has the potential to play the most vital role in entrepreneurial development by
creating and highlighting all such platforms which can bring out the creativity and innovation
among the women and men to grow entrepreneurship culture in society.
Developing

countries

are

definitely

in

dire

need

to

encourage

women

entrepreneurship as women workforce is promptly available to exploit the unexplored

dimensions of business ventures. Developed nations should primarily focus on
entrepreneurial educational programs in order to develop women entrepreneurs.

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