Women entrepreurship

Name – Harsh Suchak Roll no- 2017232
Class - MMS-I Div - D
Women entrepreneurship
and their contribution in
global scenario.

INTRODUCTION
Western society in the early nineteen century, dictated that the most
suitable place for the woman is her home. People believed that
women can best serve the society by offering their energy to the
creation of healthful and nurturing households. However in the
1970s, women left home and entered the workforce in large
numbers.
A woman entrepreneur is a woman or group of women who initiate,
organize and operate business enterprise for personal gain. The
concept of woman entrepreneur is related to the concepts like the
women empowerment and emancipation. Today we find women in
different fields as compared to the earlier days where the activities
of the women were limited only to the domestic work. Today we
find women in not only in papad, pickles and powder businesses but
also in manufacturing, trading and service sector. No doubt the
speed is very low, but women are entering into the entrepreneurial
field and certainly they are creating their impact.
 The woman plays a significant role in the economic
development of any country. This is a considerable factor with
great emphasis on any developing scenario.
 Women contribute and support the economy extensively in
different ways by being employed in many different sectors.
Many successful businesses are run by women some of whom
are very skilled in entrepreneurial activities. Some of these
women are well educated and are aware of correct application
of theory in business.

 Women entrepreneurs in both developed and developing
countries are socially powerful in terms of education and
making a positive impact on the society.
 It is important to study how women in business and their
skills can be utilized to achieve a sustainable economy in a
developing nation.
 Women entrepreneurship is key to the developing world in
promoting sustainable practices in business socially,
economically and ecologically.
 In the last few decades, the attitudes of people have changed
and women entrepreneurs are considered significant in
economic development and wealth creation. Women
entrepreneurs also recognized as social icons to motivate
women in developing countries.
 The significant number of woman headed businesses and their
productive activities, particularly in the industry sector make
them a force to be reckoned with and empower them in the
overall economic development of their nations.
 Whether they are involved in small or medium scale
production activities, or in the informal sectors, women's
entrepreneurial activities are not only a means for economic
survival, but they also have positive social repercussions for
the women themselves and their social environment.
 Today, many opportunities to start new businesses and
international support is available to women entrepreneurs
 Female-run enterprises are steadily growing all over the world,
contributing to household income and growth of national
economies.

 About 40% of enterprises in developing countries are owned
and run by women.
 Women entrepreneurship is a potential means of empowering
people, developing rural women and solving other social
problems. Women entrepreneurs can be positioned to play an
important role in promoting sustainable practices in
economics, social system and ecology, to reach sustainable
development.

STATS
The World Economic Forum Gender Gap Report and the Food
of United Nations 2014.
 Women own nearly 8 million businesses in the United
States accounting for $ 1.2 trillion of the GDP. Compared
to men, women tend to spend more of their earned
income on the health and education of their families.
 In the United States, women went from holding 37% of all
jobs to nearly 48% over the past forty years. Some
statistics show that the reductions in barriers to female
labour force participation would increase the GDP of USA
by 9%, the GDP of Europe by 13% and the GDP of Japan
by 16%.
 The reduction in barriers to women‟s equal access to
productive resources could raise total agricultural output
in developing countries from 2.5% to 4%. It will also
result in reducing the number of hungry people in the
world by up to 150 million people

Conceptual framework

Why do we need more women entrepreneurs?
 Women earn for themselves and the family, therefore the
family is able to fulfil their needs. In such families, the burden
of earning is not the 100% responsibility of men. On the other
hand, entrepreneurship helps women to use their abilities and
skills in a maximum capacity, while giving them self
satisfaction. More that 50% of the executives also agreed that
women run businesses do contribute to eliminate poverty of a
country.
 Majority of women support the society and the country’s
economy by offering goods and services and by offering
employment opportunities. Providing employment
opportunity is helpful in eliminating poverty.
 There is a positive partial, but strong relationship between
women's entrepreneurial activities to eliminate poverty and
the employment opportunities created by the actions of
women entrepreneurs. This is significant, especially for a
sustainability driven economy. Women in businesses
worldwide have created independent women. It is very
common in developing countries. In Africa, women run
businesses mainly support them to feed their families. Social

issues such as domestic violence and prostitution also can be
eradicated if women can become financially independent.
Women Entrepreneurs in Social Development
 Women and employment is a factor that requires special
consideration in any developing country. Women are the main
characters in the family who manage the wellbeing of the
family. Men earn and women mange it in order to fulfill the
requirements of the family. Women in a developing country
face many challenges. It is not an easy task to manage the
affairs of one’s family. Managing a business while paying the
attention to the development of one’s family is a great
challenge. Yet, women entrepreneurs have successfully
overcome this challenge. Women entrepreneurs are adapt at
facing challenges posed by the external environment.
 Women entrepreneurs promote culture and traditional aspects
through their business operations. Women always try to align
their activities with cultural and traditional values. Women
play a key role in practicing cultural aspects and promoting
tradition, especially in developing nations. Women
entrepreneurs who participated in this study mentioned that
they apply and use traditional methods of production, for
example, indigenous agricultural methods in order to protect
nutrition and freshness of vegetables.

 Women contribute to the society by playing different roles like
the roles of the housewife, mother, daughter and the good
citizen. The roles performed and the responsibilities fulfilled
by women entrepreneurs for the wellbeing of society are
considerably high.
ROLE OF WOMEN ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN INDIAN
ECONOMY
 The developed countries are already enjoying the fruits of the
entrepreneurship development. On the contrary, in the
developing economies like India, entrepreneurship has gained
importance in the recent past. In developing countries it is
considered as method of promoting self-employment. But one
has to see far beyond this to improve and sustain the economic
growth of the country.
 A developing economy like India needs entrepreneurs who will
use the scarce natural resources. Competent entrepreneurs
who will take risks and seize every opportunity to utilize the
existing physical and natural resources are required for the
development of the nation.
 Entrepreneurship has been a male-dominating field from
ancient times. But in the modern times the situation has
changed and women have become the most innovative and
inspirational entrepreneurs. Women entrepreneurship is a
recent phenomenon which has come into existence in 1970.

But this concept became prominent in the year 1991, when the
new industrial policy came into existence.
 This policy promoted globalization, liberalization and
privatization which created maximum self-employment
opportunities to both men as well as women. The urge of
women to be economically self dependent and the spread of
education also encouraged the entry of women in the
entrepreneurship field.
 In India we have a long list of women entrepreneurs. The
reasons these women have entered into entrepreneurship may
be different. Some might have entered to develop their family
business, some of them to be financially independent.
 .There are certain women who have started enterprise to bring
out their family out of financial crisis. As the reasons are
varied, the problems faced by the women entrepreneurs are
also multi-faced. But irrespective of the problems the women
entrepreneurs are efficient risk bearers, innovators and
organizers.
 In the 70s and 90s, the women in India were hardly engaged in
any type of self employment. During this period the women
were attracted towards various opportunities of employment
in different banks, LIC, teaching jobs, etc.
 The planning commission and also the Indian Government has
recognized the need for women to participate in the
mainstream of economic growth. Women entrepreneurship is
understood as an effective strategy to solve both the rural and
urban poverty. The government of India through different
policies and programmes is encouraging the Indian women to

come forward and involve in different entrepreneurial
activities. The Integrated Rural Development Programme
(IRDP), Training of Rural Youth for Self Employment
(TRYSEM), Development of Women and Children in Rural
Areas (DWRCA), Entrepreneurship Development Programs
(EDPs), Prime Minister Rojgar Yojna (PMRY) are a very few
examples of the different programs undertaken by the
Government of India and Planning Commission.
 The government has also extended subsidies, tax waiver
schemes and concessions for the women entrepreneurs.
1. Trade Related Entrepreneurship Assistance and Development
(TREAD) Scheme for Women - Provided by the Ministry of Micro,
Small & Medium Enterprises.
2. Integrated Support Scheme provided by the National Small
Industries Corporation (NSIC)
3. Prime Minister‘s Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP)
provided by the Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC)
and Coir Board
4. Priyadarshini Yojana Scheme by Bank of India
5. Support to Training and Employment Programme for Women
(STEP) provided under Schemes of Ministry of Women and Child
Development
6. Swayam Siddha provided under Schemes of Ministry of Women
and Child Development

7. Micro & Small Enterprises Cluster Development Programme
(MSE-CDP)
8. Credit Guarantee Fund scheme
9. SIDBI Marketing Fund for Women (MFW)
10. Management Development Programs
11. Indira Mahila Yojna
12. Mahila Samiti Yojna
FUNCTIONS OF A WOMAN ENTREPRENEUR
Fredrick Harbison says a woman entrepreneur, like male
entrepreneurs, has to perform the following five functions:
1. Exploring Prospects; A business cannot be launched until and
unless a business opportunity survey is conducted. A woman
entrepreneur too, like her male counterpart, has to explore a
business unit.
2. Undertaking Risks; Business is full of uncertainties; the
entrepreneur has to undertake risks arising out of both the
economic as well as the non-economic uncertainties.
3. Innovation or imitation of goods/services becomes an integral
part of an entrepreneurial activity.
4. Administering, co-coordinating etc.; A woman entrepreneur, like
a male entrepreneur, is the whole and soul of her enterprise. She has

to organize, coordinate and administrate the activities of her
organization.
5. Providing Leadership; A woman entrepreneur is a business
leader of her unit. She has to provide able guidance and lead the
organization towards achieving the set goals. An important point to
note here is that like the definition of the term ‘entrepreneurship’,
different scholars have given different sets of functions performed
by entrepreneurs.
The functions given by them can be classified into four broad
categories viz.:
1. Innovation. 3. Organization and Management of resources
2. Risk Bearing. 4. Leadership.
What information are we missing on women
entrepreneurs?
To advance our understanding of the differences between male and
female entrepreneurs, country impacts, biases and economic
impacts, good data is required. But Grown explained to the audience
that data is severely lacking — including being able to distinguish
between micro and small businesses.
“The picture is mixed,” she said. “There is a lot we don’t know.”

Improvements to available data are an important initiative that is
seeing progress. The gender entrepreneurship monitor has become
an important source of information that helps distinguish the impact
of male and female entrepreneurs in growth and necessity-operated
businesses. Enterprise statistics data, collected by the World Bank,
is helping to recognize the global divide and showing that women
own only about 30 percent of formally registered business
worldwide. And a partnership between Global Banking Alliance for
Women and Data2X is improving access to women’s financial
inclusion data to tackle issues banking institutes face, including
understanding demand and supply and differences in needs and
investment of men and women.
What are the barriers for women?
 Access to finance is a huge barrier for the advancement of
women-owned businesses.
 Grown explained that financial institutions perceive women to
be “riskier clients, higher cost clients and lower return clients,”
which negatively influences their investment in women
entrepreneurs. ”This is despite facts suggesting otherwise,” she
said.
 In analyzing more than 2,000 financial and banking firms, the
World Bank found SME clients were performing well, but
overlooked. “We need to think more about what we do with
financial institutions,” Grown said.
 Rebecca Ruf, vice president of programs for the Global Banking
Alliance for Women, explained that her organization has 45

member banks supporting women-owned businesses. “You
would think there would be hundreds and hundreds,” she said.
 But even among these “converted” banks, an annual survey on
the banking of women found that only 35 percent of their
customer base was women. “We have a long way to go,” Ruf
said, explaining that commercial banks were not aware of the
market opportunities and lacked understanding on the
differences in financial behavior between men and women.
 In developing countries in particular, financial barriers can be
combined with legal and policy barriers and discrimination —
including inability of married women to travel without a male
escort, barriers to identification cards, and legal constraints
around signing contracts on their own, accessing bank
accounts or registering businesses. Other constraints include
occupation segregation, lack of networks and limited links to
high-value markets.
New funding initiatives supporting women-owned
businesses
 The World Bank’s new Women Entrepreneurs Finance
Initiative, first announced in July, will soon be accepting
applications from all multilateral development banks to
receive grant financing for programs and initiatives supporting
the development, growth and market opportunities for
women-owned businesses in developing countries.
 Grown explained that solutions to encourage women to start
and grow businesses need to be bundled — and this is the idea

of the Women Entrepreneur Financing Initiative. “It has
currently mobilized more than $325 million in grant finance
with the specific objective of enabling more than $800 million
in finance from the commercial finance sector, which will
enable more than $1 billion in financing for female-owned
SMEs.”
 Thirteen countries led by Germany and the United States have
partnered with the World Bank to fund the initiative.
 Karen Mathiasen, acting U.S. executive director for the World
Bank, explained that a score sheet is being developed to rate
proposals, which will include scalability and how they target
poorer economies. “We really want them to go into hard
environments.” And the World Bank will draw on technical
experts to assess applications — men and women who know
the topic and are best placed to allocate fund to areas of
greatest impact.
 The initiative is part of an important global focus on women
entrepreneurs from development donors and the development
sector, and the timing is important in order to meet gender and
economic targets within the Sustainable Development Goals by
2030.
 “The evidence is pointing to a major scope for growth benefits
if we can help women entrepreneurs effectively, and we can
help them out of low productivity tracts,” Lee concluded.
 Problems of Women Entrepreneurs Women Entrepreneurs
struggle more than the male entrepreneurs. They have to deal
with the general entrepreneurial problems as well as problems
that relate to women in particular.

The problems / difficulties faced by women
entrepreneurs are as follows:-
1. Lack of Motivation: Women in India are not motivated to achieve
something.. . They do not experience the need to be economically
independent or to enjoy autonomy. They are obsessed by the
idea of being perfect wives, mothers and homemakers . They see
themselves only in these multiple roles that they have to
perform. They even take pride in the achievements of their
father, husband, soil etc. The very urge to do something

independently is normally absent. This comes in the way of their
progress.
2. Lack of Funds: Small entrepreneurs always experience the
problem of I finance. Women Entrepreneurs, too, confront the
problem of insufficient financial resources and working capital.
They have less access to external 1 sources of finance. They do
not enjoy bank credit in a big way on account of a number of
problems. They are either ignorant about the banking procedures
I or do not have adequate security to offer. The size of their loan
is also normally small. The time taken to process the loans is also
very long. The repayment schedule is tight. Since women also
many times lack in the ability to manage their projects and
accounts efficiently, they are unable to repay i the loans. All this
drives them into taking loans from middlemen and
moneylenders, who charge exorbitant rates of interest. This
worsens their 40 financial problems. In order to help women
come out of this vicious circle of indebtedness, exploitation and
to encourage self employment among them, financial schemes
have been formulated by the Government of India to allow then^
to get credit on concessional terms from nationalized banks and
financial institutions.
3. Lack of Education: Women in India are discouraged to learn
more than the male members of the family. There is also a
widespread illiteracy problem among them. Sixty percent of the
women are still illiterate in India. This illiteracy has become the
root cause of a number of social and economic problems. Due to
lack of education and that took a qualitative one, women are not
aware of business, technology and market knowledge . Lack of

education also results in lack of confidence, which in turn creates
problems in setting and running business enterprises for women.
4. Lack of Information and Experience: Lack of knowledge about
business opportunities, information about formulating a business
plan involving market survey, project finalization etc., lack of
information about procedures and sources of assistance in
setting up business including financial and legal aspects, lack of
knowledge about managing different areas like accounting,
marketing, manpower etc. comet in the way of handling
entrepreneurial I activities successfully.
5. Lack of Family Support: In India , it is almost only a woman’s
duty to look after’ the children, other members of the family and
also attend to all the household chores. Here the man plays a
secondary or an insignificant role. Women’s involvement in
family problems drains them of energy and also leaves little time
for them to participate in the economic activities .
6. Lack of Equality: The Indian society is still a male dominated one.
Equal treatment to men and women is absent at both the family
as well as the social level. Men have a superiority complex. The
male ego often comes in the way of their success. It is difficult for
men to digest the idea of women superseding them. Women
often face hostile reactions from their male colleagues when they
are promoted to higher levels of management. Similar is the
situation in their homes. A woman has had to forego her career
many times either because she was bringing a fatter pay packet
than that of her husband's or was executing in her career; In such
a male-dominated society, it becomes difficult for women to
contribute to the entrepreneurial activities on a larger scale.

7. Lack of infrastructure: Majority of women entrepreneurs operate
from their residential premises. This puts a limitation to the
growth and development of their projects. Time and household
duties do not permit them to move to industrial estates and avail
of the facilities provided therein.
8. Lack of Marketing Ability: When it comes to aggressive
marketing, women fail . They may be able to match the quality of
their products and services with those provided by their male
counterparts but , they do not have the organizational set-up to
pump a lot of money into advertisement. Stiff" competition from
the organized markets and the male entrepreneurs sometimes
put hurdles in their pathway to success. Despite this, women in
business have been known for giving quality products and timely
deliveries.
9. Low Mobility: Women entrepreneurs are often handicapped by
their inability to travel from one place to another for business
work. From time to time, they have to visit Government
Departments and meet Licensing Authorities, Sales Tax and
Labor Officers. They are unable to cope up with all this as
domestic responsibilities restrict their mobility. This takes a toll
on them and they are compelled to appoint middlemen to do
their purchases, marketing and other outside jobs. The outcome
is high- costs of operation which further increases their financial
burden. Problems of the above nature and the usual challenges of
an entrepreneurial career hold women back from entering into
business and undertaking industrial activities. Areas of
Development of Women Entrepreneurs In spite of the numerous
problems that women entrepreneurs confront, we find women in
a spectrum of industries today - in both the traditional as well as

the non-traditional ones. Women have entered and been
successful in electronics, engineering, fashion designing,
jewellery designing, interior designing, solar cookers, dairy, food
products, handlooms, handicrafts, soaps and detergents, cement,
drugs, nurseries, leather, plastics, poultry, garments, fabrics,
ceramics, doll-making, catering, claiming, knitting, textiles,
printing, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, transport, communications
and computers. Women have entered all areas open for
entrepreneurship (except mining) and, therefore, one cannot
identify certain areas as suited for women entrepreneurs. People
today do not raise their eyebrows when they see a woman
heading an organization, though some are surprised seeing
women in male domains. Examples of outstanding women in
business may be cited here.
Conclusion
In recent decades, there is an increasing interest in women
entrepreneurship development. Governments, policy makers and
academics have paid special attention towards developing this area,
particularly in developing countries. This interest has encouraged
countries to establish and support women entrepreneurship,
especially in rural areas. This resulted in linking local capabilities
with the rural economic growth and taking them into the self
employment sphere. Most importantly, this concept has helped

governments to eliminate poverty and create employment
opportunities. Women as entrepreneurs are now playing a far
greater role than they did at the introductory stages. They are more
educated and better aware of information. Now they are faced with
another challenge to drive the economy towards sustainable
development. Socially responsible, economically concerned and
environment friendly activities in these enterprises carried out by
women reach their own business goals while supporting to reach
national goals. These businesses focus on trading with the poor,
helping the community to develop skills and abilities, paying fair
prices and receiving fair payments, encouraging fair treatment of all
staff and encouraging environment-friendly conditions in business
operations. These are activities which are significant in sustainable
development of a country. Developing nations must focus further
attention towards women entrepreneurs. They need to further
consider avenues to build capacity of women in relation to business
development, including their capability to become productive and
innovative entrepreneurs while accepting their contribution to the
national economy.

Women entrepreurship

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