Women entrepreneurship new horizon for bangladesh 1

KEYNOTE SPEECH
B Y
RUMANA
PARVEEN
A S S I S T A N T P R O F E S S O R O F
M A N A G E M E N T
U N I V E R S I T Y O F D H A K A
Women Entrepreneurship:
New Horizon for Bangladesh
RUMANA PARVEEN, UNIVERSITY OF DHAKA

Introduction
 Demographic structure of
Bangladesh : women comprise almost
50% of the total population (BBS,
2012).
 Without a meaningful and active
participation of women, half of the
total population, in regular economic
activities, a dynamic and sustainable
economy is impossible.
 The Constitution also keeps an
obligation for the state to ensure
women’s active and meaningful
 participation in all spheres of public
life (Article-10).

Introduction
 World Bank Report on Bangladesh
Income Group Lower middle income
Population 158,512,570
Female Population 78,362,971
% of Women in the
Workforce
60%

Introduction
 Over the past 20 years female owned businesses grew
dramatically in number, revenues and employment.
 With data from the U.S. Small Business Administration
showing that women-owned businesses are one of the fastest-
growing segments of the small business community
 In Norway and Canada nearly 60-65 per cent of the new
businesses were started by females.
 This phenomenal trend also has been seen in many Asian
countries such as China, Indonesia, Singapore, and India .

Introduction
 Entrepreneurship has become an important profession
among the women of Bangladesh today at various levels of the
society, both in the urban and the rural areas.
 Where women of the poorer sections of the society, especially
of the rural areas, have been forced into off-house income
through entrepreneurship for economic solvency; the women
of the middle class families, who have always lived restricted
lives, have today, ventured into entrepreneurship as a
challenge and an adventure into a new world of economic
activity.
 Many women have taken up entrepreneurship and become
businesswomen not necessarily to earn and survive and raise
the living standards, but to form their careers and become
professionals in order to establish their rights and thereby
contribute towards the progress of the society and the nation

Who is entrepreneur?
 An entrepreneur is variably defined as
 one who assumes the financial risk of the
 initiation, operation and management of a business or
undertaking;
 an individual who organizes and manages labour,
capital, and natural resources to produce goods and
services to earn a profit, but who also runs the risk of
failure;
 a business person who accepts both the risks and the
opportunities involved in creating and operating a new
business venture.

Women Entrepreneurs
 Women Entrepreneurs having the same definition
work under the same macro, regulatory and
institutional framework as their male counterparts.
 But gender biases embedded in society limit
women's mobility, interactions, active economic
participation and access to business development
services.
 Women remain far behind men in enjoying basic
human rights, let alone participating with men on an
equal footing in economic activities.

Why Women Become Entrepreneur?
 Organization for Economic
cooperation and
Development (OECD)
Report
 Women remain under-
represented as
entrepreneurs. When asked,
fewer women than men say
they would prefer to be self-
employed.

 In China, 48% of the women said they want to control
their own futures.
 In France and Mexico, 61% and 66% respectively, said
they wanted to be entrepreneurs to have pride in
themselves.
 In USA the single biggest motivator is different, 55%
entrepreneurs said they wanted better work-life balance.
 Because out of 185 countries, the United States is one of
just three that doesn’t guarantee paid maternity leave,
the others being Oman and Papua New Guinea.

 Research by SME foundation : 2009
 The most common motivating factors behind woman
entrepreneurship was to add to family income (47.25%) .
 Grameen Bank Report:
 Major portion of women beneficiaries (53.3%) took
decision for starting own small business to reduce poverty
of their families.

 Research Findings: Motivating Factors to be Women
Entrepreneurs
 i) To create self-dependency
 Ii) Self inspiration for Self employment
 iii) Inspiration by friends
 iv) For economic freedom
 v) To upgrade social status
 vi) alternative to have a job
 vii) Pass leisure time
 viii)Inspiration from some organizations
 ix) Creating opportunity for others
 x) Inspired by training
 xi)To establish women’s rights
 xii) Eradicate gender Discrimination

Negative/ Impulsive factors that motivate women
entrepreneurship
 Unemployment
 Insufficient family income
 Dissatisfaction towards wage work
 Possibility for time management
 Migration and withdraw of social status

 Research by SME foundation

Women Entrepreneurship in Bangladesh
 a very negligible
proportion of the
total business
entrepreneur in
Bangladesh : only
10% are woman
 The situation is
improving after
year 2000.

 Research by SME foundation : 2009
 Majority of the women (85.41%) had sole ownership of their
business enterprises which belonged to the Small enterprise
sector and were the proprietors of their business.
 Sources of Fund:
 The majority of the women entrepreneurs 87.5% managed their
sources of initial capital out of their own savings.
 32.2% women entrepreneurs’ husbands provided them the
initial capital.
 Fathers provided 7%
 NGOs provided 7%
 Government Agencies provided 6.7% of such capital to the
women.
 3.6% were provided by their friends,
 3.3% by their mothers, and
 2.4% by Non-Bank Financial Companies.

Bangladeshi Women Entrepreneurs
Rokeya Afzalur Rahman-RR Cold Storage
Limited, MIDAS
Ms. Nasreen Fatema Awal - Vice
Chairperson of the Multimode Group,
heads Women Entrepreneurs Association
of Bangladesh
Sabrina Islam- Reflections, produces
decorative art glass
Geeti Ara Safia Chowdhury – ADCOM
Selina Quader- A successful female
entrepreneur – agro-business
Nagina Najnin, chairperson, Eminent Agri-
Industries Ltd

Bangladeshi Women Entrepreneurs
Luna Shamsuddoha is the founder and
Chairman of the software firm Dohatec New
Media
BiBi Russell is the founder of ‘Bibi
Productions’-a world renowned fashion house
Ivy Huq Russell, a former investment
banker, Founded Maya with a vision to
empower women through giving them access
to information and a shared community
Sabila Enun is an entrepreneur working as a
Project Manager at Dcastalia
Taslima Miji is the founder and CEO of
Techmania- a company, based in Dhaka,
Bangladesh, that provides hardware and
hardware related services
Selima Ahmad is president and founder of
the Bangladesh Women Chamber of
Commerce and Industry (BWCCI)Vice
Chairperson of the Nitol-Niloy Group

 Women in rural areas are being self-employed
through the agricultural and nonagricultural sector,
as entrepreneurs (L. Parvin, J Jinrong and M. W.
Rahman,2012).
 These activities are cropping, livestock and poultry
rearing, fish farming, nursery and tree planting, tool
making, handcrafting, food processing, tailoring, rice
processing, etc.

 Such women entrepreneurs are more in numbers at
the upper - and lower-levels of the economical ladder
than at the mid-levels. To be precise, it is more
common in the cosmopolitan services' sector and
lower-level family businesses like grocery shops and
handicrafts in the rural areas.
 Working in a male-dominated, competitive and
complex economic and business nvironment, women
have to fight on their own, for participation in
different fields of economic activities, in varying
degrees.

 the predominantly male middlemen, suppliers,
contractors and exporters dominate the industry and
take advantage of women's isolation at home and lack of
access to credit, supplies and market knowledge about
the value of their work
 Home-based self-employed entrepreneurs lack access to
inputs and services like credit, market information and
new technology that could increase their productivity.
Due to lack of market facilities, they also do not get the
proper prices for their product

a 2008 report by the Bangladesh Women’s Chamber of
Commerce found that
 most women entrepreneurs only sell their products
locally and that 43 percent sell their products at
lower prices than their male counterparts in order to
compete effectively.
 In the rural sector, women do not generally own
physical assets that can be used as collateral for
loans; the titles to the assets do usually belong to
their male relatives. Even if capital is available, high
lending rates discourage investment.

 Furthermore, bank loan procedures are not that easy for
women entrepreneurs to comply with, in general,
because of some bureaucratic problems. Since they do
not do job, they do not have tax identification numbers
(TINs) and other necessary papers like bank transactions
and guarantees required for bank loans.
 Also the rural women entrepreneurs are generally poor
and lack education, self-confidence and legal knowledge
that are needed to protect their businesses and
industries. They often fall victims to illegal threats or
criminal offenders.

 From the societal aspect, lack of recognition from the society
before success, makes it hard for women entrepreneurs to
retain their motivation. Also in most conservative families, the
idea of women doing business is not well accepted.
 Previously, women entrepreneurs were participating more in
sectors that were traditionally dominated by women such as
handicraft , apparels, boutiques, food and beverage, beauty
parlour, tailoring, household or family trade etc.
 The situation is improving slowly; today, women are also in
occupations which were solely controlled earlier by the male.
Women are now seen also as owners and managers of cold
storages, shipping lines, advertising firms, travel agencies,
interior decoration enterprises, engineering workshops and
even garment industries.

 Impact of Micro credit
 In order to build up woman entrepreneurship on a small
scale in the rural areas of Bangladesh, the role of Grameen
Bank (GB) is unique. It is true that GB is engaged in
bringing dramatic changes and improvements in the socio-
economic condition of the rural Bangladesh by providing
credit through its non-traditional credit delivery system.
 Total beneficiary of Grameen Bank = 7.06 Milion
 97 % are women , most of them are investing money for
income generation
 40% small/ micro business = 2.8 milion
 50 % agro-business = 3.5 milion

Challenges of Women Entrepreneurship
 Organization for Economic cooperation and
Development (OECD) Report
 As they frequently divide their time between working and
family maintaining; women’s businesses are usually on a
smaller scale and in a limited range of sectors.
 They often have less experience when they start up a
business and are also less likely than men to borrow
money to finance their business.
 These factors contribute to women entrepreneurs
frequently earning 30 to 40% less than their male
counterparts. Yet female-owned businesses make a key
contribution to household incomes and economic
growth.

0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Social barriers 95%
Lack of capital 90%
Lack of proper training 86%
Unsecured communication 81%
lack of raw materials 75%
Religious and social customs 71%
Sexual harassments 65%
Lack of efficient workers 60%
Family restriction 45%
A situation analysis of women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh,
Bangladesh Women Chamber of Commerce and Industry

 Another key struggle for women business-owners is
related to balancing family issues.
 Work-family conflict results from inter-role conflict
caused by conflicting pressures from work and family
domains, including job-family role strain, work-
family interference, and work-nonwork role conflict.
 Women are more likely to have primary domestic
responsibility and to have un-interrupted careers
which create work-family conflict.

 From the aspect of demand side:
 Fear of being rejected
 unwillingness to have collaterals from partners,
 Lack of knowledge on different available options of financing
scheme
 Lack of appropriate skills to evaluate the business
 Complex procedure in the institutional level
 gender biasness of the male dominated support centers
 Complicated arrangement in legalizing and formalization of
business
 Inadequate technical knowledge and managerial experience
 High cost of credit forcing for more collateral and provide a
spouse’s co-signature

 From the supply-side perspective:
 Financial institutions’ reluctance to finance women for start-ups
 women have Insufficient assets to cover the debt-burden ratio
 Low capitalization
 Vulnerability to market fluctuations
 High mortality rates
 Lack of accounting records and inadequate financial statements
 Lack of business plans
 Less access of the male officers to the women entrepreneur and
 Difficulties in identifying entrepreneurs involved in informal
business sectors.

 Additional obstacles found in a research:
 family-oriented mentality of women,
 government's unfriendly attitudes towards women
entrepreneurs,
 lack of market information and marketing strategies,
 unavailability of business development services to
women entrepreneurs,
 unavailability of loans at lower interest rates
 lack of opportunities for women to develop skills in
business management.

Factor Contributing to Success

Factor Contributing to Success
Women Entrepreneurs expressed their opinion on their
success

Government Initiatives for Women
Entrepreneurship Development
 The major initiatives undertaken by the Government
so far include the establishment of a separate
ministry on women’s affairs, the formulation of the
National Policy for Advancement of Women in 2008,
and the National Action Plan (which was prepared in
response to the Beijing Platform for Action).

 The Government has also formed a National Women
Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) Forum under the
SME Foundation of the Ministry of Industry to promote
women’s participation in formal economic sectors.
 Bangladesh’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP),
which is now the main document for Bangladesh’s
national development, also incorporated some
noteworthy issues to ensure women’s participation in
social and economic life.
 The industrial and SME policies of 2005 have
emphasized women entrepreneurship development,
particularly in the SME sector (BWCCI, 2008).

 All commercial banks and non-banking financial
institutions (NBFIs) will have to provide a minimum of
Tk 50,000 as loan to at least a woman entrepreneur each
year to expedite the ongoing financial inclusion programs
in Bangladesh.
 “We’ll able to create nearly 10,000 women entrepreneurs
every year if the initiative continues,” - BB Governor
 the central bank of Bangladesh has taken special policy
measures and opened refinance windows to facilitate the
development of women empowerment in various sectors.

Support Services for Women
 Different types of organizations provide either direct or
indirect supports to women entrepreneurs besides the
government.
 (a) Bangladesh Small and Cottage Industries Corporation (BSCIC) (b)
Bangladesh Bank
 (c) State and private commercial banks
 (d) Financial institutions
 (e) Bangladesh Rural Development Board (BRDB)
 (f) Bangladesh Management Development Institute (BMDI)
 (g) Directorate of Women Affairs (DWA)
 (h) Development of Youth Development (DYD)
 (i) Bangladesh Manpower Training Bureau (BMTB)
 (j) Micro-industries Development and Assistance Services (MIDAS)
 (k) Job Opportunities and Business Support (JOBS) and
 (l) NGO-MFIs have microcredit program

Women
Entrepreneur
Association of
Bangladesh (WEAB)
 Established in year 2000, by a select group of businesswomen.
 The main object of WEAB was to develop a support system for women
entrepreneur to not only improve the quality of their products, to meet the
changing market demands, but also to impart training on technical know
how, design development and to create marketing links for their products.
 Training programs are regularly organized for WEAB members in various
fields ranging from food processing, textile designing , manufacturing of
garments, of artificial jewelry, supplying dry and fresh flowers to hotels and
restaurants, food catering on large scale, establishing educational
institutions and setting up trendy fashion houses and quality development,
production of new and innovative handicrafts to export-import, indenting,
even running of petrol pumps.
 WEAB has created a platform for women entrepreneur to meet and network
for their mutual benefit.

Bangladesh Women
Chamber of
Commerce and
Industry (BWCCI)
 It is a non-profit, non-political organization established in June 2001
 Its aim is to encourage and strengthen women’s participation in the private
sector as entrepreneurs through promoting a women friendly business
environment.
 BWCCI is the country’s first chamber of commerce, which is exclusively
working on women’s economic and social empowerment.
 BWCCI is a strong community voice, lobbying for micro to macro women
entrepreneurs to assists their growth and to improve their social and
economic prospects.
 BWCCI is committed to being a leader of broad based economic
development in Bangladesh for business women & industrialists. It
supports the women business community by providing training,
management & financial resource, expertise & support networks that
enable small businesses to succeed & prosper.

Bangladesh
Federation of Women
Entrepreneurs
(BFWE),
 It was founded in 2006, is a non-profit professional organization in
Bangladesh.
 BFWE offers a wide range of benefits and networking opportunities.
BFWE encourages women to support each other, to enhance
recognition of the achievements of women in business and the
professions, and promotes the growth of women-owned enterprises
through research and sharing information.
 The vision of BFWE is to serve as a platform that would accelerate
women's economic empowerment in Bangladesh.
 The goal of BFWE is to provide an environment for women
entrepreneurs in urban and rural areas of Bangladesh whereby they
would grow and develop their fullest potential as business
entrepreneurs.

Women entrepreneurship new horizon for bangladesh 1

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Similar to Women entrepreneurship new horizon for bangladesh 1

Similar to Women entrepreneurship new horizon for bangladesh 1 (20)

More from Nazmul Alam

More from Nazmul Alam (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Women entrepreneurship new horizon for bangladesh 1